Comments on: Beijing Railway Station Employee Ticket Scalping?

By: New Year Goals: Find Job, Find Husband, Oh Yeah! | chinaSMACK

New Year Goals: Find Job, Find Husband, Oh Yeah! | chinaSMACK — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:12:53 +0000

[...] Beijing Railway Station Employee Ticket Scalping? [...]

By: New Year Goals: Find Job, Find Husband, Oh Yeah! « WiFi Shanghai

New Year Goals: Find Job, Find Husband, Oh Yeah! « WiFi Shanghai — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 17:33:18 +0000

[...] Beijing Railway Station Employee Ticket Scalping? [...]

By: 24 hours on a Chinese train, in pictures : Ch-infamous

24 hours on a Chinese train, in pictures : Ch-infamous — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:24:30 +0000

[...] little slide show up on the GlobalPost site just in time for Chinese New Year and the inevitable train scandal mayhem. Significantly, the photos come from a trip I took to Chengdu in December, during which I [...]

By: Lao Zhong

Lao Zhong — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:45:38 +0000

I witnessed in-house scalping at the Qinhuangdao station last year. The Railway worker at the booth was certainly ‘working’ with the scalps operating around the station area. I went to two separate booths only to be told there were no tickets available (as they were making eye-contact with scalps that I’d previously spotted.

Eventually, I asked a Chinese person to try and buy me a ticket and surprise, surprise, the transaction went through smoothly.

I think however, on this occasion re. the worker in Beijing was actually trying to be more effecient and not part of a larger ‘plot’.

By: fl1999

fl1999 — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:05:00 +0000

The level of grassroot corruption is China is simply appalling. And the cause of ten thousands of deaths every year (just think about road traffic). However the raw stupidity of the Chinese public, especially its Netizens quoted above, is equally appalling! And the two are related, of course: who are those grassroot officials (ticketing staff, court officers, policemen, fire safety bureau people etc.) if not average Chinese people. High level corruption is much less of a problem (it exists everywhere in the world) as it doesnt impact people’s everyday life in the same manner – grassroot corruption is what is killing this country. Hello to Confucius and Deng “Greed is Good” Xiaoping, the two national champions of corruption!

By: Kai

Kai — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:10:45 +0000

@ Samael:

This BBC report is echoing the explanation given by the authorities in this translation. The Chinese comments replying to this NetEase article seem to indicate that quite a few Chinese people don’t buy the explanation that this was just a misunderstanding. As I said above, I personally think its conceivable, but who knows how those tickets were eventually used and what role the woman printing them played in it.

By: USTCer

USTCer — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:43:33 +0000

I have personally seen Zhengzhou train station staff selling tickets in a guest waiting room. What they did was first printing bunch of tickets at ticketing counters(the only place tickets can be printed) and then sold them in a different place with the original price to travelers who change trains (if they failed to buy a 连乘 ticket for a multi-stop itinerary, which is not rare). I believe it’s reasonable to reserve some tickets in case of need, though selling tickets to people who’s changing trains with priority is not quite fair to people outside the station in a cold weather.

By: Mikey

Mikey — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:14:54 +0000

quote: Cao, SB, it’s bad enough to be scalping tickets, it’s worse to cheat naive people.

BUT ALRIGHT TO THIEF FROM FOREIGNERS RIGHT?

By: Samael

Samael — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:31:06 +0000

and here it is again in pro quote squares

…That is why travellers became enraged when they saw a video recording posted online of a Beijing ticket saleswoman printing more than 100 tickets.
The suspicion was that the saleswoman was selling tickets on the side – but it turned out she was simply preparing tickets for sale.

By: fireworks

fireworks — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:19:44 +0000

Must be those hotels, tour companies and cronies who are friends of the railway bureau booking these tickets and leaving the commoner the last tickets.