With train tickets now on sale for the 2020 Spring Festival holiday in China, the rail network is bracing itself for 440 million trips made nationwide, but the mad rush for tickets means that most of the popular routes are already sold out.
It’s known in Chinese as “Qiangpiao” (抢票), translated in English as “ticket scramble”. To many, it marks an unofficial start to the new year, as they begin their annual preparations for the journey back to their ancestral home.
Yet, the reality of the qiangpiao is a lot of headache for most people. 10 January to 18 February is the official period of Chinese New Year in 2020, and with tickets going on sale 30 days before a train’s departure (online or by phone; 28 days at railway stations, ticket agencies and self-ticketing machines), so this last week has seen the rush begin.
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Yet, regional variations abound. A city such as Nanjing, where the majority of the populace is actually from elsewhere, becomes a virtual ghost town during Spring Festival.
Therefore, much of the travel is westward before the new year, and eastward afterwards. Chongqing, Chengdu, Xi’an, Zhengzhou, Lanzhou, Wuhan, Changsha are the hottest destinations almost every year. As an example, at time of writing, there were virtually no tickets available from Nanjing to Xi’an for 10 January, whereas every train in the opposite direction has seats for sale.
Of Nanjing’s eight million residents, approximate five million will leave for the new year, just about 1 percent of the 440 million total that represents the biggest human migration on Earth.
That’s a lot of people to move out of a city.
With everyone well aware of the qiangpiao, for any chance of success in buying a ticket, it is important to know exactly when tickets will start to be sold. As an example the ‘start-to-sell time’ for trains departing from Nanjing Railway Station is 4:30pm, except for some types of trains for which tickets are available all day (including high-speed trains), whereas that at Nanjing South Railway Station is 5:00pm.
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Writing for The Nanjinger in 2015, Ann Feng reported, “Because I had class when the tickets I wanted started to sell, my father was going to help me buy a train ticket from Nanjing to Xi’an for 22 January. But at 4:30pm on 24 November, when 12306.cn (the Railway Ministry’s official ticketing website) started to sell tickets, he refreshed the website but surprisingly found out all kinds of tickets had been sold out. As he refreshed the website from time to time in the following 3 days, there were still no tickets. Finally, he spent ¥41 more to buy a ticket for a train from Wuxi to Xi’an, which stops at Nanjing Station”.
For those who miss that all-important start-to-sell time, Feng advised, “Keep refreshing the website instead of giving up! From 7am every day [until 6pm], 12306.cn lets out some tickets every half an hour [or hour]”.
China’s national railway operator revealed last week that the 440 million expected rail journeys represents 32.5 million more trips over last year. To provide an increase in capacity, OurJiangsu has reported, “More than 100 additional high-speed train services will be scheduled to operate each night”.
