Beijing Railway Station Employee Ticket Scalping?

From NetEase:

Summary: A video titled “Beijing railway ticketing officer printing lots of tickets” spread on major websites, igniting angry responses from online forums. The video shows the office closed, with the blinds half-drawn, during office hours. But through the small gap, one staff can be seen printing tickets and bundling them. The Beijing station claims that the staff’s action was misconstrued.

Ticketing officer seen printing tickets but not selling

The video footage was released on YouTube in 3 parts. In it, a ticketing officer was printing tickets but not selling them in Beijing No. 37 ticketing office. All three parts were taken outside the office. Outside grumbles, and complaints can be heard from the packed queue.

“Hey, you still take [the tickets], you still take! [the tickets] (sic)”

“Not tensed at all, eh?”

In the video lasting 3 min 13 sec [shown above], some passengers knocked on the windows to no avail. The staff paid no attention and continued to print tickets, and had a fun time chatting with colleagues. After that, she bundled and categorized the tickets carefully, keeping a count of her tickets with a logbook. In another video lasting 15 sec, she finally noticed that she was captured on camera. She drew the curtains closed.

The anonymous cameraman even pointed the camera at the station clock. In the video, the time was 9.03am, 10 January. The ticket office was No. 37.

The reporter discovered that the videos were originally posted at Youku on 10 January. It was later uploaded at YouTube, Mop, Tianya, and other online bulletins. Ren Ming Wang, NetEase, Sohu, Fenghuang, and others also have this video. There were over a hundred comments within two hours at YouTube, while Tianya garnered over 2000 comments and 90,000 views in a day.

A comment from “Chu Tian Ge” reads: “After watching this video, think about the people queuing for railway tickets in the cold? Where is the conscience of these ticketing comrades?” Another comment called for strong punishment and wanted the rail authorities to release the station hotline so people can call them and complain.

There was even a “human flesh search” for the ticket officer. However the numbers turned out to be false.

Railway Station: It’s a misunderstanding

The reporter arrived at Beijing station yesterday afternoon. A fully packed crowd is still seen outside the ticketing office. The officer at No.37 office is no longer the one seen in the video.

No. 37 mainly sells tickets for services towards Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou. According to the officer, ticket sales start at 9am sharp, and normally all the counters will be open.

The reporter then asked a staff who was not in the shift at that time about the incident, but was denied an answer.

Yesterday night, a relevant Beijing Railway Station authority gave a response concerning the “ticket seller printing but not selling tickets during selling time” problem. This person in charge stated, this incident was a matter of “train ticket distribution method” misunderstood by travelers. He explained that as “Chun Yun” nears and because of how close two holidays are, the Beijing Railway Station had anticipated high passenger volumes. To make it more convenient for travelers to buy tickets, the Beijing Railway Station put into practice the “separate area, separate line, separate destination” selling of tickets. This separation of train ticket sales requires the ticket sales staff to print an amount of tickets in accordance with the direction a concentration of passengers are going and then give those tickets to the specific window before they are sold.

This person in charge also stated that according to Ministry of Railways requirements, ticket sales management have clear instructions that ticket sales staff found to be withholding tickets without authorization will be dealt with severely.

Comments from Netease:

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

Cao! Does anyone even believe this bullshit?

In the bus, I overheard another person call the radio to request a song, a man called in and said: “I am a wai di ren. Right now, the train tickets home are sold out and I can only spend the new year in Xiamen. I want to dedicate a song.” The DJ/host asked him: “Who do you want to dedicate the song to?” At the time, I thought: do you really need to ask, it must be his distance parents and relatives. Who would have thought he would instead reply: “I would like to dedicate Chen Xiao Chun’s 《算你狠》 [“Ruthless”] to all the staff at the Ministry of Railways and all the ticket scalpers.”

This brother is such a genius!

I also want to dedicate Zhang Xue You’s 《你好毒》 [“You are venomous”] to all the Ministry of Railways staff as well as all the ticket touts working on the front lines!

Since it’s the new year, I also want to dedicate a song 《恭喜发财》 [“Gong Xi Fa Cai”, “May you be prosperous”] to all the Ministry of Railways staff as well as all the ticket touts working on the front lines!  to wish them prosperity in the coming year! May the money roll in, and your arrogance lead you to death!

No wonder buying a train ticket is even harder than winning the lottery!

This kind of explanation is very irrational, what so-called “distributed sale of tickets”…it is simply a sham!

Going home last year for “Chun Yun,” I spent a lot of money to buy a train ticket (it was downright impossible to book a ticket at the ticket windows). Upon boarding the train, I was shocked. Cao, there were empty seats everywhere!!! Why?? Earlier, I inadvertently learned from a ticket scalper that ticket scalping has actually already become a seasonal occupation, that there are many tickets on the market, but those businesspeople have heated the market on the premise that “what is rare is expensive”, increasing the fears of the masses that are in a rush to go home and be reunited [with their families], ticketing windows without tickets, are in the hands of the ticket scalpers. Want 10 tickets? He can give you 11 tickets…but the only thing is that the price cannot be lowered. Those people are definitely working in groups/gangs. The organizer bastards sometimes would rather not sell [the tickets] than pull down the ticket scalping market prices. This is how the large amounts of empty seats on the trains happen. Do the math: 10 tickets * 100 RMB/ticket = 1000 RMB, 9 * 120 = 1080 or 9 * 110 = 990. This is a business whose sums cannot be carefully calculated. Either way, there is always a group at each place doing this kind of thing, all making the same amount of money, or even more. They would rather throw away the leftover tickets than let the market prices go down…this should be considered the “trick of the trade!!

The ultimate lifestyle:

Salary from Saudi Arabia, live in a British house, use a Swedish mobile phone, wear a watch from Switzerland, marry a Korean wife, keep a Japanese mistress, get Thailand massages, drive German cars, fly American planes, drink French red wine, eat Australian seafood, smoke Cuban cigars, wear Italian leather shoes, play with Spanish girls, watch Austrian musicals, buy a Russian villa, employ Filipino maids, have Israeli bodyguards, enjoy Turkish saunas, and be a Chinese official.

If you can become the last one, all the preceding ones can be fulfilled.

I believe the woman was not printing tickets [for the ticket scalpers].

The reason is very simple: No one would be so stupid as to print that many tickets in front of the window [so others can see].

If they do it, they would do it after work. When there is overtime pay, who would not do it after work?

Only those who do not get overtime pay would slowly do something [including work] during working hours.

However, there is at least one point:

Both organization and management [of the situation] are much too unsatisfactory.

The amount of trains are too few, to be fair, the increase cannot handle the sudden increasing stream of people.

Of course, this does not mean they can increase simply because they want to increase: Train cars, new staff, train lines…

Everyone should consider it more fairly

But yes, organization and management truly is too unsatisfactory!!!

SB, are you the ticketing person? Commenting like that, clearly arrogant to the extreme, do you know why people rob, kill, and set fire [rioting] in broad daylight? [Because of injustices like this]. The SB in the Ministry of Railways, not even knowing how to lie. What are all the people inside [the ministry]? Idiotic pigs?

Everyone hail the “zhuang bi” king!

See Also:

• Spring Festival Train Ticket Lines In Ningbo & Xian
• Charity Gives Migrant Workers Train Tickets & Cash