No luck at the ticket window
China’s online ticket sales for train tickets this Spring Festival have gotten off to a rocky start. The website broke on day one, and despite promises to the contrary, it hasn’t gotten much better since then. Users have been able to buy tickets, but many report it takes them hours of frustrating loading and reloading before an order finally goes through.
Now, one migrant worker has written an open letter to China’s Railway Ministry with a different complaint about the online ticketing plan: it’s unfair. Huang Qinghong, a laborer who works in Wenzhou but hails from Chongqing, says the new system is biased against the poor because online and phone sales of tickets began several days before brick-and-mortar sales windows began selling tickets. By the time windows opened in his area, he says, all the tickets for the trains he wanted were gone.
As a migrant laborer, Huang says he can’t afford a computer, nor does he have the time it would take to learn how to use one or to set up online banking and payment accounts. He’s got a point; amidst all our talk about Chinese net user numbers growing, it is important to remember that owning a computer is still financially out of reach for hundreds of millions of Chinese.
Of course, mobile phones are nearly ubiquitous here, but as Huang points out, the phone-based ticket ordering system is complex and time consuming (especially when it isn’t working properly). White-collar workers who spend their days in offices most likely find it easier to spend the hour or two on the phone it’s been taking people to buy tickets successfully this year; laborers have a much harder time spending hours on the phone during time when they’re supposed to be working.
Huang and some of his coworkers were aware that tickets were being sold online, and attempted to buy some, but were unsuccessful as none of them knew how to use a computer. However, reporters in Wenzhou found that most of the people who lined up for tickets like Huang did weren’t even aware that tickets were available online, although many of them also said they couldn’t use computers anyway.
The Railway Ministry has taken steps to inform the public of how to avoid or solve issues they run into while buying tickets online or over the phone, but mostly, that information has also been communicated online. Personally, I think Mr. Huang has a good point; the current system is biased in favor of white collar workers who have more time and more access to the tools needed to buy tickets. Changing the system so that tickets go on sale the same day on and offline would be a good start, but it’s a bit too late for that this Spring Festival. Huang and many others like him will be faced with trying to find other ways to get home — likely more expensive ones — or spending the holiday in the place where they work, away from their families and with no work to keep them occupied.
Sounds like a lose-lose to me.
[Dongfang Daily via Sina Tech]