The 12306 conundrum
- By Liu Yan
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E-mail CRI, December 16, 2015
"Here we go again." I uttered this very sentence a few days ago upon hearing that 12306.cn officially started selling train tickets for the upcoming Chinese New Year, which falls on February 8, 2016.
The Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, is the world's largest annual migration event. Over the course of roughly 40 days, billions of passenger trips are expected to take place across China, when people travel back home to reunite with their families.
In theory, this sounds like a joyous occasion. Who wouldn't want to go back home and be with family during the most important holiday of the year? However, the experience of buying train tickets through 12306.cn has become so painful that many are actually dreading the Spring Festival.
For those who are not exactly in the know, 12306.cn is China's official website for booking train tickets. In other words, it is the only legitimate place for Chinese to purchase train tickets online. Since the website was launched in 2011, complaints of its inefficiency have never stopped. And like clockwork, criticism always reaches a fever pitch shortly before the Spring Festival. Hence my "here we go again" sentiment.
I understand that it is incredibly difficult to run such a website, given the sheer number of users who are trying to get train tickets around this time of year, but I really can't say "Oh come on, nothing is perfect. Just suck it up and move on!" with a straight face. I mean, if a government-backed service-oriented website is this lousy after being around for almost five years, customers surely have every right to use colorful language to vent their frustrations.
Let's take a look at some of the latest examples and see if I'm being too harsh here. They all involve some sort of verification code, which is a must before you can submit your order. And to get the verification code, you need to correctly answer a series of questions. Apparently, these questions are quite difficult because 12306.cn is trying to prevent scalpers from using software to grab tickets.
"Identify all pictures that depict tennis rackets."
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