Over a Billion People Have Visited China’s Train Ticket Site

More than a million people have visited China's online ticket sales portal, and plenty of them got error messages like this!

We’re nearing the two week mark and China’s new online train ticket sales site still doesn’t seem to be working properly. At a press conference yesterday, Railway Ministry officials acknowledged that the site was still experiencing problems, but noted that the site has been under extreme stress. Between January 1 and January 7, they said, the site saw over one billion hits. Given that the service was just launched on December 29, this might make it the fastest-growing website in the world.

Ten million people thus far have successfully managed to purchase tickets through the site, a process that apparently requires time and patience for the site’s frequent crashing and errors. Right now, according to Ministry officials, tickets are selling at a rate of around two million per day.

It’s not clear when the technical problems with the site will be fixed, but since most Chinese are buying tickets to return home for the fast-approaching Spring Festival holiday, it may soon be a moot point. A technical fix would still fail to address complaints that the system is biased in favor of white-collar workers, but it looks like a fix for that — if one is coming at all — will have to wait for next year.

At the same press conference, Assistant Minister Hu Yadong also responded to questions about the safety of China’s high speed rail system, saying that “the safety of the lines is reliably guaranteed.”