Eric's Beijing Diary

I've been having a bit of a harder time getting out of Dodge this summer. It's already the 26th, and I am still sitting here in Beijing. Part of the problem is my schedule. I spent a couple more weeks in Beihai than I had wanted to. So my final exams here in Beijing were given two weeks later than they were last year. The other part of it is that I was a little more stubborn this year about getting a train ticket. Last year I gave up rather quickly when I couldn't get a soft sleeper ticket. I was going to Xinjiang, and Urumuqi (the capital city) is a long, long ride from here, and I was taking another 24 hour ride after that to go to the extreme western tip of China. The trip from Urumuqi to Kashgar takes about as much time as the trip from here to Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu Province. So it wasn't too hard for the travel guy to talk me into a plane ticket, especially since he was able to save me about 1000RMB on the price. Anyway, I really didn't want to fly to Lanzhou this year. As I have mentioned before, getting sleeper tickets (especially soft sleeper, but this time of the year, any sleeper) can be really tough. The high demand breeds a shadow business of scalpers who buy up bunches of tickets to control the distribution, and make a bunch of money in the process. What I have never been able to determine is whether this is done through bribery or through speculation. At any rate, tickets cannot be purchased more than four days in advance. So when I showed up at the ticket window near the East Gate of Beihang University Friday to buy a ticket for Tuesday (July 25th), they told me that the tickets would be available at 7 pm. But when I got back shortly after 7, there were no tickets available. This is what makes me think that the there is some corruption involved. Somebody is paying someone to release a bulk of tickets early. Of course I don't know, but it sure seems that way. When I was in Dali a couple summers ago, many (but not all) of the travel people absolutely refused to do business with these guys.

I called my travel agent as soon as they told me at the ticket window that there were no tickets. He said he would try to find a ticket through one of his connections. He has managed to do this before, but I am getting more and more irritated by this process. As I said, I have never been able to determine that this is indeed corruption rather than speculation. But I really don't want to be part of something shady, and even if it is not shady, it is still extremely distasteful, and going through a travel agent who has back-channel connections just seems to me to be encouraging whomever is buying tickets in bulk to sell through these connections.

But I had no luck. Monday morning I called my agent's office to see if they had anything. Zilch. I told them to contact me as soon as they heard something. I didn't get a call, so I called them. No luck. Finally I decided to give them until morning. When I called yesterday morning, they told me it was really difficult. Nobody had anything. OK. I gave up. I went to the ticket window to buy a plane ticket. The guy at the ticket window saw me and asked if I wanted a plane ticket or a train ticket. He had obviously seen me in there several times trying to buy a train ticket, and was wondering why I went to the plane ticket window. I told him that I had wanted a train ticket, but that nothing was available for my destination. He checked the computer, and told me there was a hard sleeper ticket on the top for the 27th if I wanted it. I have no idea how that ticket suddenly appeared when none had been available before. Probably someone cancelled out at the last minute.