春运, “chun yun”, is the term for the many Chinese people who travel around the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) time period. Many Chinese people who have left their hometowns to work in other places in China must “return home” to visit their families and celebrate the holiday together. This happens every year and most people travel by taking the train. Train tickets can only be sold and purchased a maximum of 10 days before the desired departure date and there are only a limited amount of tickets available. This is one reason why many people must line up and wait many long hours (or days) so they can buy a train ticket to go home for Spring Festival, which is Janauary 25 this year. Here are some pictures of the lines and people waiting to buy train tickets in Ningbo:
A large and crammed contingent of people buying tickets to go home.
January 2, at the Ningbo International Exhibition Center temporary ticket sales location, a ticket-buyer who has queued for two days drapes a cotton blanket around him waiting to buy tickets.
"Buying ticket with blanket" is a powerful complaint/denouncement against the area government's inaction or bad actions.
The road home is endlessly long, when can the "difficulty of buying tickets" finally get a fundamental solution?
Pairs and pairs of eyes longing to go home, but the awkward result after waiting could be "tickets have been sold out."
These pictures are from Xian, China:
2009 January 3, at Xian Railway Station, people queue to purchase train tickets.
2009 January 3, at Xian Railway Station's mobile ticket selling point, many students line up to buy train tickets.
Pictures and captions from NetEase, Sina, and this blog.
Comments from NetEase:
In many places in Guangdong, there are a lot of people who cannot get tickets, but ticket scalpers have many tickets. After getting arrested, a ticket scalper immediately says he has connections to get out. He also says there are so many people doing it, so he is not afraid.
Wish everyone can all get tickets and return home on time to celebrate the new year! Where is my ticket? …
How come we do not see any sign of the leading cadres???
With Chun Yun so many years now, it is still the same, even with increasing trends. I want to ask just what are the country’s relevant management departments doing, how are household registrations being managed, how is birth control being controlled, and whether marriage laws and legal marriage age regulations are a little out of date!!!
The name of the person who purchased the ticket should be printed on the train ticket or qualified identification document numbers!
It is really severe right now, having to wait this long of a line just to buy a ticket to go home.
Every holiday is like this, leading to many people celebrating the new year, the holidays away from home, unable to be reunited with their families. Is it possible to change this kind of situation?
Sigh, my god, who can we blame? Who made us have so much people?!
I really really want to go home. I am afraid of not being able to get a ticket. It has been three years now that I have not gone home. Seeing what you all have said is really frightening, just like there not being anymore train tickets tomorrow.
There is not even a decent queue, so how could it be anything but messy?!
The Ministry of Railways, the group of pigs, is too stupid! Yelling for so many years and still nothing can be done! Pigs!!! (Also possibly wolves! Otherwise, what would this group of wolves eat?)
Sigh, the miserable journey is about to begin again!!!
Comments from Sina:
It has been many years since I have been home to celebrate Spring Festival.
There is no way [for me to get home]…
Fellow workers: Everyone work together, and do not go buy those expensive tickets [from ticket scalpers]. After ten days, what can those ticket scalpers do…
The people inside and outside of the train stations are in collusion, giving the majority of tickets to the ticket touts and dividing the profits between themselves. So for places like Dongguan Railway Station where for several days straight there were no tickets available immediately upon opening the [ticket sales] windows, where did those tickets go???
In this respect, China is really awful, often not having any tickets even before tickets begin being sold. The Railway Bureau’s management is really awful.
Seeing these scenes every year makes my head hurt, faint, and want to vomit. Yet every year I must experience this kind of scene twice. Sigh!!!
This definitely is not China… [sarcasm]
From Youku Buzz:
In this video uploaded yesterday by a Youku user, you can see the long queue outside the railway station in Hefei, Anhui. Most passengers in this first wave of “chunyun” were college students who had waited hours at the temporary ticket windows.
See Also:
Related Posts:
- Charity in Shenzhen, Guangzhou helps poor migrant worker visit their homes & families for Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) with free train tickets & cash. » 19 comments
- Video of Beijing train station ticketing officer printing tickets but refusing to sell angers Chinese netizens frustrated with Spring Festival travel problems. » 16 comments
- A Chinese university girl posts her (Chinese) new year goals outside her dorm room. First find a good job, then find a good husband, and finally, "oh yeah!" » 21 comments
- Chinese netizens shocked by news report showing a crowd of scalpers or touts rushing to buy registrations for a hospital to resell to real patients for profit. » 108 comments
- Criteria for hiring female train attendants in China include being under 20-years old, over 1.65m tall, under 50kg, pretty appearance & good personal character. » 110 comments
Charity Gives Migrant Workers Train Tickets & Cash 
Beijing Railway Station Employee Ticket Scalping? 
New Year Goals: Find Job, Find Husband, Oh Yeah! 
Chinese Hospital Rushed By Patients & Ticket Scalpers 
Train Attendant Selection Process or Beauty Contest? 
First.
3 bottles of Baiju, 234 packets of cigarettes, a laser pen, 3 spare pants, a taser and a psp is all you need for a queue that long.
Why is it that everybody ‘has’ to go home at CNY? How many foreigners do you know in China that only go home once every two years, or haven’t had Christmas at home for years? I know plenty!
But when you point out to Chinese that this is the same situation, of course the answer is “no no no, you foreigners don’t understand” or “of course its diferent for foreigners, we are good to our parents and see them every year, but you foreigners have all gone to a different country! you’re so unfilial”.
tjoohooo
it is almost like when it’s sale at Walmart or Kohl’s after Thanksgiving Day!
@dace:
It’s funny that you brought up the comparison to Christmas. I am a Chinese living in the US, and 90% of my American friends in college go through many inconveniences with school work and expenses to go home for Christmas break, which greatly puzzles me to the same degree. I think you just have to come to terms with the fact that every culture has its own version of the holiday, and those that are traditional to that culture feel natural to honor it to that extent. As to us, well, we’re just among the minority, I suppose.
But the real problem here isn’t the simple tradition shared by those people. If the government crooks and their relatives/accomplices aren’t so depraved to the point of exploiting such basic needs of the underprivileged and fatten their wallets through ticket scalping, the lines wouldn’t be as long, and there wouldn’t be such “news” to begin with. It’s nothing more than just another wreckage of this country’s ever polarizing political-economic structure.
4 Bc
What is worse is the spring festival break represents a major disruption for manufacturers and exporters — China’s main form of income and this is only going to make it worse. Many of my colleagues are leaving for their home towns early next week because of the difficulty of getting tickets…
this will stretch out the break to two weeks and the disruption into who knows how long.
You really wouldn’t want to screw with the country’s productivity in the current economic climate but that is exactly what is happening.
@ Gareth:
I get what you’re saying but the simple response to your comment is: Would you ask Westerners to give up their Christmas holiday in an effort not to “screw” with their country’s “productivity?”
Silly, right? About as silly as Chinese people judging Westerners as not being filial simply because they don’t visit their parents for a Chinese holiday they don’t celebrate.
@ Bc:
Good comment. Rock on.
I wonder why the mainland rail company hasn’t gotten with the program and allow ticket sales over the phone or online? Guangdong people can apparently do this if they’re taking trains operated by Hong Kong’s MTR; a pity those elsewhere don’t have the option.
If I was a migrant worker in Ningbo, I’ll stash up with food, money, cigarettes, alcohol and find the private or unlicensed taxis to go back home to the county district if I can’t get those tickets from the train stations.
Its a sea of people, how can anyone beat the hectic mad rush for the festive season.
@Jamar.. yeah the millions of migrant workers will be over the moon when they can book on their iPhones, problem solved!
BC:
i definitely agree with you man, especially the corruption in terms of scalpers.
by the way, im not chinese; i went to tianjin last yr to vacation with my gf. the night before we were supposed to leave we went to the main train station to buy tix. we had asked for the fast train to take us back but she gave us the slowest one, and pretty much told us to buzz off (oh did i mention because there was a scalper buying shit lods of tickets by the counter window) and qhile in line i witnessed a fight between one of the scalpers and one of the passengers the police didnt even do anything except just throw the guy out, but one of the scalpers was still buying away the tickets..long story short we eventually got the fast train tickets after going to another line and waiting for another 1+ hr, and me using my laowai skills of acting dumb (meaning pretending i dont speak chinese and when trying to buy tix, show proof immediately of my passport) in english to talk and etc.
i later asked my gf about this, i could see disappoint in her face in a sense of somewhat losing face about her country; i saw no sense of losing face over this, i did however think the fight was interesting while the cops took their slow ass time to walk over and break it up…i guess everyone is on the take?
proves again that this group of people need help the most, not tibetans.
Free Migrant Workers!!!!
This happens only twice a year–before and after Chunjie. I don’t see any reason why the railroad transportation capacity should be doubled to accomodate an exclusively seasonal need while, for the most time of year, it would be over-supplying.
I’m sure unpleasant things happen during the ordeal of getting a ticket. And i’m sure the presence of unethical scalpers makes this experience even worse. I do appreciate, no irony intended, the insight that extends beyond what are seemingly infrastructure and management problems. The ability to transform a social phenomenon into a fundamental issue of a country, either political or ideological, is something I earnestly desire.
Free the migrant workers?
Weren’t they freed in the ’80s?
It seems to me that this would be a great opportunity for some dude with a bus ir a van or w/ever to offer charter trips! A bunch of people from a similar area, all pooling their money, no waiting in long lines, everybody wins!
I went to Beijing West Railway Station in Beijing a few days ago and got some video footage, there are many many people traveling for Spring Festival Chun Yun.
@riceagain- you come to the weirdest conclusions. Cheap net-cafes are in abundance, as are payphones.
Chunyun is not simply a burst of transportation but a war, a war for both the country and common people.
For the country, Chunyun means that the transportation system has to arrange 2.2 billion travelings, in which 196 millions are taken by trains (2008’s figure) in 40 days. Most railway travelings happened in several main lines from coastal cities where migrant workers and students work/study to their hometowns. Today’s railway transportation system in China simply doesn’t have the capacity to guarantee that everyone can have a ticket. The government may be able to build as many rail lines as needed for chunyun but it’s then a great waste in the rest eleven months.
For common people, the war starts from buying a ticket. For migrant workers, as shown in this blog post and many other reports, days of lining doesn’t guarantee ‘the precious piece of pink paper’, and situation can be worse when bad weather comes (as seen in last year’s storm). However, students can buy tickets from university agencies and 4 tickets per year (between university city and hometown) are guaranteed (may not be true for all univ.). Sounds like planned economy is coming back. Boarding at rail stations is campaign no. 2. If you carry large baggages, you’d better rush into the trench(train) as quickly as possible otherwise there will be no place on shelf to put your stuffs. With mountains of people in rail station, it’s not a easy job. In train carriages, about 2/3 travelers have to stand. Going to washing closet is almost a mission impossible. Most train travelings are over 1000km since otherwise people would take buses. I heard stories that some have to stand for over 50 hours before they can reach home! In this war, these migrant workers are the most hard to defeat soldiers: they eat unimaginable bitterness and their stubborn for victory(going home) is unbeatable. Now you get home, but the war is not over and you can only rest for little while. In twenty days, reverse your path and suffer it again.
The war repeats itself every 12 months.
Sitting in a Chunyun train is one of the most unforgettable memories in my life, as all kinds of feelings, hopes and desperation, energy and powerlessness, warm in heart and feeling helpless, all crowded in a small carriage. Only until then I understand the hardships of traveling as depicted over and over again in travelers’ logs in China’s thousands of year history.
However, Chunyun can also be ‘luck of spring’(春之运气). Like in all war movies, romance happened. I was companied by ladies in some Chunyun travelings and they were charming talkers. My girlfriend and I met with each other first time on a train and started our relationship later. The crowded place in a Chunyun carriage ‘forces’ young people to talk in a close distance (sometimes with touching of bodies), and chemistry will take care of the rest :)
Free the migrant workers?
Weren’t they freed in the ’80s?
———
technically they were freed in 1949, but technically they are still in trouble, so technically the government and us need to help them.
Just wanted to make a glib remark about how for the first time in the 80s, the party allowed the peasants to move around after the communes were phased out, thus being ‘freed’.
But anyway, I’d have said, ‘officially’ they were freed (or liberated) in ‘49, ‘technically’ they were ‘freed’ (from the shackles of the collective) in the ’80s, now they need the gov’t to embrace them as something more than second class citizens. Take welfare, in that case, gov’t doesn’t need to ‘free’ them per se (or technically), but clasp them to its teat…
yeah the gov can start by lifting them from third class to second class, if not from fourth class to third class.
however I think the real issue lies within the people, take my city for example, I live in beijing, theres always been descrimination against immigrating peasants because their poor manner and appearance, locals view them as a huge burden.
to me, I honestly don’t like some of these low life forms, the area where I live was crowded and literally destroyed by them, they dump shits (yes I mean shits) and dead animals into a nearby river making all sorts of delibitating odor and the environment bureau had to construct fences and dispatch work boat to clean the riverbed but they somehow still keep doing it. and the streets are just PILED with litters from their business activities.
but simply deporting or controlling them (theres already enough outrage about temprary residential permit) isn’t a top-notch solution, all these phenomenons trace down to one cause — uneven development.
and as such, we need to put a brake on wealthy cities and begin focusing on rural regions.
2006, I travelled down to the south of China during Spring Festival. No Chinese ability, no idea what I was facing. Had a fantastic time and everyone at the railway stations was so helpful to me.
Last stop was Chongqing. Immediately on arrival I tried to purchase a ticket back to Beijing for 2 days later. After a lot of waiting, pleading, and playing dumb, I finally got a ticket.
It was a hard seat ticket. I actually did get a seat. But it was a 36 hour train ride. The train carriage was so packed it was like playing klotskie just to go to the bathroom. It was a totally unforgettable experience that I never ever want to go through again in my entire life.
“The name of the person who purchased the ticket should be printed on the train ticket or qualified identification document numbers!”
Wow! That’s actually a pretty good idea. But the railroad ministry needs more motivation to reform and we probably won’t see any improvement for like 5 years to a decade. *sigh*
To me, the main problem is not so much the amount of trains but the ticket scalpers and the government not effectively stopping it. Right, it DOESN’T make economic sense to sink money into more trains that wouldn’t see use throughout most of the year. However, it DOES add insult to injury when ticket scalpers are running wild and trains depart under-capacity while people outside are complaining that tickets for that train were “sold out.” I really do not think there is any excuse for the government or relevant authorities to NOT improve this situation of combating scalping other than the fact that they can’t be bothered to. And that’s fucked up.
Exactly, it’s uneven development, but that problem is perpetuated when the government essentially refuses to acknowledge the existence of migrants in the cities. If the party doesn’t make moves to adequately accommodate them, migrants may well have to resort to shitting in a river. However, it’s easier said than done. Every developing country of the world has its urban under-classes.
The problem with the CCP though, is you never know if they aren’t doing things they can’t do, or aren’t even trying to achieve things they can. The point about allowing scalpers is just one example of something they should be able to remove, but seemingly don’t.
And it’s not so easy to just say development in the rural areas will help relieve the problems in the cities. Migrants move to the cities to get jobs because their labour isn’t needed on the farms. However, what this means is that new cities are being built in the rural areas. But it remains to be seen how effective they’ll be at equalising standards of living if not wages. One instance saw members of a town removed to make way for a new city. Those displaced farmers who’d lost their homes and farms were given small dwellings much like a barrack. If that’s all that can be provided for people with a clear ‘right’ to actually live in the city, it’s easy to see why migrant workers live in such poor and overcrowded conditions. Despite promises, their children were also refused access to the new school (for wealthier urbanites) and had to go to the lesser one, miles away, that had existed before the city.
Yep, the migrants/peasants have it harsh, and the gov’t seems to want to keep it that way, for whatever reason, which is a shame considering the peasants in the fields were so instrumental to initial CCP accession.
Bought my GF airplane ticket – only twice the price of a train ticket.
Existence of scalpers prove only one thing: those tickets are priced too cheaply. There should be allowed market prices and the poorer could get subsidy from government AFTER buying the ticket
here’s a country which can spend millions to acomodate for the olympics and manage the ticketing for an international event, but not capable of putting a fair train ticketing system in place for years..
@NL
you are incorrect that the government wants to keep it this way. I am drawing a huge line between the central leadership and local governments, leaders in beijing have very promising and pragmatic ideas for rural improvement and I can see they push hard to make them work but local cadres and interests simply reject most if not all reforms.
the local government is so protective and short-sighted that top leaders often have to go around the country in person or send special unit to supervise critical policy implementation, which is really sad.
take this ticket sales for example, soon after Hu addressed this issue to Railway Ministry the Guangzhou train stations magically had alot redundant tickets, which says alot. I hear minister Liu’s in-law operates a network of “unofficial” sellers across the country who profit by reserving tickets for astronomical price.
so there you see the real problem, conservative vested interests have bee delaying much needed reforms, and unfortunately the ccp needs them to stay in power.
The problem I personally have with making distinctions between the “local government” and the “central government” is that it can be both a reasonable explanation and a reasonable excuse. Either way, the real problem still exists, and that problem is an inherent conflict of interest and mutual dependency for survival.
I understand this is not easy to solve, but I feel the strategy of blaming the local government and presenting the central government in a sympathetic light tends to perpetuate a false hope in “enlightened kings.”
I feel this problem is deeply rooted not only in failure of government policies but in Chinese culture in general.
Chinese politics are an intricate web of political interests, personal interests, and guanxi (what is the difference?).
This lack of separation between those interests makes for a perfect recipe for corruption. Because the concept guanxi is so deeply rooted in Chinese culture corruption is really hard to avoid.
Added to this is the Chinese business sense that is keen on avoiding rules in the most legal way possible (for every rule there are 1000 ways to get around it). With scalpers probably arguing why it is illegal for them to buy 100 tickets.
Even if as a righteous government official you are able to cut through the web of interests and guanxi (linking the scheme you try to stop to the official above you) and stop the organized branches, there will be small entrepreneurs doing the same thing.
TIC…everything is possible, nothing is easy.
@Kai
I understand your concern, people ought to decide for themselves, but given the state of our nation, average citizens don’t typically have a say in politics so the only thing they can do is praying for a lenient king. in fact thats how its always been for thousands of years, and is ingrained in people’s genes.
@wuxia
you can’t be more precise, the overwhelming family value in this country is the primary drive for corruption, it leads me to think that if we have separation of power today, the three branches would converge back tomorrow.
the premise of economics is that buyers and sellers make rational choice, and that requires free flow of information which we don’t have here, so the market is a wild and awkward battleground.
@ Peteryang:
Right, so the question that only Chinese citizens can make for themselves is whether they prefer to be at the mercy of others or at the mercy of themselves. As you also state, there is a lot of sociological–dare I say “cultural”–inertia involved.
the frustrating problem is chinese have been under imperial rule for too long, theres little sense of individualism and rights, people are too afraid to bargain with the government so when they have issues the first instinct is to find someone to rely on, which makes this place a decent breeding nest for authoritarianism.
so it all boils down to the very people, there are just too many bumps and blocks on the road of this reform we need to get over with. Hu said modernization takes dozens of generations to achieve, I believe him on that one.
Living under imperialism too long sounds more like a lazy excuse to justify your reasoning why change is slow. There’s plenty of revolutions against structure imperialism in the past however change still has been slow. Fundamental challenge is people are at different socio-economic levels. Maslov’s pyramid shows as more people are lifted out of poverty they’ll be less concerned with physiological needs and more with social needs; hence why the burgeoning middle class pushes for more rights while a rural farmer in Qinghai wouldn’t stress over freedom of speech anytime soon.
@zing
no its not an excuse, and I was just pointing out the issues at hand, heck I even dream china to be modern and democratic THE NEXT DAY but that won’t happen. and you can’t deny what I said, the culture, history and tradition, they are major encumbrance to reform.
and you are right that we need enough middle class, people who naturally demand political participation, so then democracy can flourish. poor peasants who still struggle for survival are very unlikely to know their rights let alone voting.
First I don’t think that psychological hump really exist. Second, if it does exist, it is not bad at all in certain ways. The big thing that’s wrong about the Chinese government today is not that power is not distributed evenly. It’s that the ones holding the power is not worthy of that power. The ones that have the power is not competent, smart and most importantly collective minded. They only think of themselves, not the state. So the solution could be to redistribute the power to everyone, but it also could be to just select more worthy people to have the power through a fair process.
Well then specify how culture, history and tradition is the major hinderence to reform. You said little sense of individualism is a problem but I can name half a dozen countries in Africa, middle east, central asia that are very individualized yet have authoritarian regimes. While Japan, S. Korea successfully embraced democracy with a collectivist culture. I believe the socio-economic situation is the major stepping stone.
@ Hammy:
Um, isn’t that one and the same? Selections (or elections) of more “worthy” people is by itself a distribution of power, specifically the distribution into the hands of the voters or whoever is part of that “fair process.” The very idea of distribution of power is that no one person has a monopoly on the truth or what is “right” or “more worthy.”
Moreover, your suggestion that “more worthy” people be in government is exactly the false hope in “enlightened kings” I mentioned earlier. The people in government and those who benefit from them feel they are plenty worthy to be there. Who are you to disagree? How are you going to disagree? You say they’re not doing enough, they say they’re trying. You say change them, they say you’re causing social instability. Don’t rock the boat, know your place, right?
@ zing:
Yes, that’s the prevailing Western policy towards China right now, the hope that engagement and subsequent rising economic prosperity will foster a rising middle class that will become more preoccupied with less tangible guarantees of rights and property. Good reference to Maslow as well.
That said, there are reasonable arguments for what Peter is saying, in that specific cultural or historical experiences are indeed possible obstacles to rapid reform or change. This is what many Chinese intellectuals love arguing as well. After all, someone socialized to define themselves by their relationship to those around them is going to be somewhat different consciously to someone socialized to define themselves by their inherent and innate characteristics. I don’t think categorically ignoring these real differences is the right thing to do.
On the other hand, I see these justifications or excuses in opposition to more rapid reform/change as a slippery slope. There comes a point in time where further “preparation” of the people (education, civic-mindedness, etc.) before entrusting them with further power becomes silly and you just need to let them learn through experience. Trial by fire as they say. Or perhaps learning by doing. Sink or swim. Of course, there’s going to be an adjustment period, as people come to terms with the power they have and how to use it, and that adjustment period is precisely what many Chinese cite as too dangerous without adequate preparation. They’re afraid the country would be torn apart before people figure out how to govern themselves. So, the current situation continues, where the “leaders” who “know better” largely make the decisions for the people (and are handsomely rewarded for it) while “waiting” for the people to be elevated until that one day when the leaders feel the people are ready. It is still all very Marxist, er Maoist.
do I really need to elaborate this?? alright.
our traditional family value taught by Confucius places elder above everyone else, in a sense that the grandest father has authority over all family activities, feudal rulers exploit this sentiment by claiming himself to be heaven’s son aka father of all so he may rule with cultural justification and unfortunately some people passtionately believe this so they accept to be enslaved.
futhermore, this results in collectivism in which each individual must submit to interests of the whole, now this may sound very democratic but again, the rulers are often the ones who decide for the “whole” so the ruled mass obey his will instead of the real collective interest.
so I think the true culprit is that chinese rulers are extremely apt at exploiting the culture, but not the culture itself.
and I didn’t say individualism cannot exist in an autocratic society, in fact individualism and liberalism make the autocracy difficult to sustain, but can still be sustained by force if the dictator knows what he is doing.
you said bout Japan and S.Korea, well, all I can argue is these two countries, when they adopted liberal democracy, successfully separated culture from politics.
thank goodness SARS is not on a rampage right now, think about how fast it would spread through those crowds…..
ping….ping….ping….ping….ping….