Yellow Cow

The other day I mentioned how Spring Festival, as Chinese New Year is known here, is sort of Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one, where everyone leaves the cities to go home and visit their families in the country.  Most people take the train, it being the most economical means of long distance travel.  However, people who work at the train ticket booths know that the demand for tickets is high, so they buy them and then scalp them.

Interestingly, the Chinese term for this type of ticket scalping is huáng niú, which literally translates to “yellow cow.” I have no idea where this idiom originated, and neither did anyone else here I asked.  But a ticket bought from a yellow cow is known as a huáng niú piào, or a “yellow cow ticket.” Two of my employees, who tried for weeks to legitimately buy a ticket, had to end up buying one from a yellow cow, which comes with a markup in price of about 40%.  In one case, a ticket which was ¥170 regularly was ¥240 from the yellow cow. 

But this is China, and they do things the Chinese way.  Imagine if all the ticket agents at the airlines bought all the tickets at Thanksgiving, then sold them on eBay, that’s more or less what it’s like.