Why aren't the tickets there?

The public has plenty of guesses about why a railway ticket is so hard to book during the Spring Festival travel rush, but no one has the final answer, says an article on the website www.china.com.cn. The following is an excerpt:

Netizens have been worried about buying railway tickets on the eve of the Spring Festival. This was evident in a poll conducted by the website of People's Daily in which more than 70 percent of the surveyed said they hoped to buy higher-than-normal-price railway tickets through scalpers.

The reason for that is simple: It would be impossible for them to buy tickets, especially for sleeping berths, without the help of scalpers.

People tend to realize that even though tickets are not available at the ticket counters, it doesn't necessarily mean a train has no empty seats or beds. In such a situation, you must turn to scalpers for help or you have to use your own connections with railway insiders.

Some also blame the difficulty in getting tickets on the existence of too many scalpers. If so, scalpers would have bought the majority of the tickets. But it seems impossible for them to do so especially when the police have intensified their crackdown on ticket touts year after year. Moreover, many railway stations also cap the number of tickets one person can buy from the ticket counter.

In short, why we can't buy a railway ticket through the ticket counter still remains something of a mystery.

(China Daily 01/15/2009 page8)