自动售票机后面的工人劳作

The time of Spring Festival means a journey home for nearly everyone in China. This requires an army of staff working tirelessly to make that happen. CCTV Shi Wenjing finds out what goes on behind the scenes at a railway station in Shanghai.

To most Chinese, they are all waiting for that ticket. To home that, is during the spring festival. It is the country's busiest period for travel.

For many, the first step to the journey home begins with the ticket vending machine. It spits out little printed tickets faster than the over the counter option.

But few people pay attention to mechanics behind the tickets.

Wang Jianjun is one of the maintenance workers who oversees more than 100 machines at this railway station.

"What I’m doing is to add new tickets to the machine. Before the spring rush, we usually add one time per day. But now we have to add three to four times a day. Each roll has a thousand empty tickets that can be printed on. This afternoon we’ve added tickets to forty machines," Wang said.

Each round of supplementing tickets takes Wang and his team approximately two hours. Because all machines are placed in different areas, they have to walk more than ten kilometers every day in servicing the machines.

Wang said he has worn out many of his shoes. And it's not the physical activity that is taxing. Their minds needs to be active too.

"At the end of each day, we will settle account for part of the machine. The amount is about two million yuan each day. They are consisted with coins and notes. It usually takes us three hours to account," Yu Wenjin, maintenance worker with Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station, said.

Nearly 70 percent of all tickets at this railway station are sold through the ticket vending machines.

They are more popular with younger people, as the older citizens prefer for buying them at the ticketing booth.

We ran into Ji Jia, a graduate student who is buying a ticket home.

"Well, I think the ticket vending machine is very convenient. Just a few clicks you can get a ticket. But if the machine has a problem or I have problems of buying a ticket, I think people will still have to go back to the old way to buy the ticket. I think both have their own advantage," Ji said.

Ji Jia's mind is now focused on her anticipated trip. It is efforts of many of these workers which ensures smooth logistics at the station so that people like her will get home in time for the Spring Festival.