那些怪异又心酸的春运回家的故事
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爱思英语编者按：虽说每个人都知道在春节时坐车很混乱了，但不得不说的一点是，当你冲去买火车票时才会见识到何谓更疯狂。虽然这些年已经实施了帮助缓解春运购买返乡票的压力的新措施，但节前用极端不寻常的方式对应票售罄状况的故事层出不穷，一起来看看他们的分享吧。 8 Strange & Sad Stories of Spring Festival Travel The compelling photographs and accompanying descriptions illustrate the incredible difficulties that many people have encountered trying to purchase train tickets to travel home for the Spring Festival holiday during the past few years. While travel during Spring Festival is notoriously chaotic, it could be said that the rush to purchase train tickets for this period is even crazier. Although new measures have been implemented during the last few years to help alleviate the stresses of buying tickets and getting home, the pre-holiday period is still not without its share of stories about sold out tickets and people dealing with it in unusual and extreme ways.
1) This is how you fit seven people into a five-person car A family of seven was preparing to head from Qinghai Province back to their hometown in Dali County, Shanxi Province for a funeral but the train tickets were sold out. With no other option, they opted to drive their own taxi instead. When the car was stopped by traffic police on January 13, 2013, the officers discovered two nine-year-old children curled up in the trunk.
2) The unspoken drawback of online purchasing Wang Keding and his wife were waiting in the ticket hall of the Hefei Railway Station on January 19, 2013, hoping that tickets would be available the next day. Wang, a 39-year old migrant worker from rural Sichuan Province, doesn't know how to use the internet so was unable to book his tickets online. Unsurprisingly, tickets sold out quickly and he and his wife have had no choice but to head back to the railway station every night after work to try again. This was their seventh straight night waiting in the ticket hall.
3) What do you mean ticket scalping is illegal?! A young married couple was arrested in Foshan on January 9, 2013. Their crime: helping migrant workers purchase train tickets to return home for the Spring Festival Holiday. The arrested man's elder sister told reporters that her brother had told her about his impromptu business venture—purchasing tickets for migrant workers for a 10 RMB commission. "I had no idea that this was illegal, and neither did he," his sister said. According to a local police officer, the couple will spend the holiday in jail.
4) When nature calls… On January 5, 2012, a woman waiting in line for hours at the Chengdu North Railway Station to purchase a train ticket was faced with an awful decision to make: go find the bathroom and lose her place in line or relieve herself in public in front of thousands of people. Hopefully she succeeded in purchasing a ticket.
5) A Taiyuan police officer pays it forward An elderly farmer went to the Taiyuan Railway Station on January 8, 2012 to purchase a train ticket to see his daughter in Tianjin. Besides not having a national ID card, he also discovered that he couldn’t afford the train ticket, and collapsed in front of the station in a fit of tears. Upon hearing of his situation, a police officer escorted the elderly man to a nearby kiosk where he could apply for temporary ID cards and also subsidized the remaining value of his train ticket. The officer then escorted him to the gate and asked an attendant to watch after him. The kind gesture brought the elderly man to his knees and, to express his thanks to the officer, he offered to give him several of the local products he was carrying.
6) Sometimes, waiting in a ticket line is longer than the actual train ride home A reporter went out to photograph the temporary ticketing kiosks set up at the Hangzhou Railway Station on January 9, 2012 when he came across Li Zhuqing, a man desperately trying to get back to his hometown in Hunan Province. Li told the reporter: "I've already been in line for five days and nights straight, and I still haven't been able to get a ticket. Can you help me?" According to his story, Li's 80-year-old mother had called him up a few days ago and asked when he was coming home. After he explained to her that he'd been waiting in line for several days with no luck so far and that he might not make it home, she starting sobbing uncontrollably on the phone. This photo, taken on January 10, 2012, shows Li sleeping while standing in a ticket line.
7) “Too much pressure…” On January 19, 2012, a 30-year old unmarried man who worked in a factory in Shenzhen tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge because train tickets to his hometown in Lufeng, Guangdong Province had sold out and he'd be unable to celebrate the Spring Festival holiday with his family. After being taken to the hospital, the man was quoted as saying, "There's just too much pressure. Life has no meaning."
8) When life gives you lemons, you…take your clothes off? In a fit of anger over train tickets to his hometown being sold out, Chen Weiwei, a migrant worker in Bailongqiao, Zhejiang Province, stripped out of his clothes and streaked around the Jinhua East Railway Station ticket hall in protest on January 19, 2011. Following that incident, he somehow found his way into the station's office area, where he took off his clothes again, demanding to talk to the station’s assistant director in charge of the train operations. 附： Welcome To Hell: Chinese Lunar New Year Travel Madness
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