Black market in Expo gift tickets thriving
- Source: Global Times
- [13:42 May 31 2010]
- Comments
An advert offering to pay for unwanted Expo tickets leans against a car on Chongming Island Sunday. Photo by Cai Xianmin
By Chen Xiaoru
Scalpers are buying up the free World Expo 2010 in Shanghai gift packages that are being distributed to holders of Shanghai hukou (residence permits) on Chongming Island.
Some Chongming residents say scalpers appeared as soon as the packages were delivered to households on May 15, offering to buy them for prices below the face value.
"When the gift packages were being handed out, a minivan filled with scalpers went from house to house looking for families willing to sell their free packages," Tao Xinglong, a resident of Weixing Village in Chongming Island's Xiang-hua Township, told the Global Times Sunday.
The gift packages are being distributed to holders of Shanghai hukou (residence permits) district-by-district. The tickets do not carry names, making them easily transferable.
Tao said that the scalpers first offered residents 200 yuan ($29.29) for the packages, which include a transporta-tion card worth 200 yuan and an Expo ticket worth 160 yuan ($23.42). Some of the first to sell were elderly people who did not understand the value of the packages, he added.
However, the prices began to rise as other scalpers joined in the hunt. "Now no one will sell for less than 310 yuan ($45.38) a package," Tao said.
Yao Hongjuan, the party secretary of Xianghua Township, admitted that there had been deals done between villagers and scalpers, and that this had happened in other townships on the island as well.
"No one has been dispatched to investigate these scalpers yet. Most come from the city center, though we do not know who employs them," Yao said.
A driver who runs a private taxi near a bus terminal on the island told the Global Times Sunday that the scalpers are everywhere, especially at major bus stops in the center of towns. Most of them are migrant workers, but there are a few Chongming locals among them.
A scalper surnamed Zhao who was buying Expo gift packages Sunday near the center of Xianghua Township, told the Global Times that he was losing money by having to buy the transportation cards as well as the tickets. Zhao declined to say who he then sold the tickets on to, though he added that the tickets were ending up with people from outside of Shanghai looking for group tickets which, due to strict quotas, are difficult to buy by legitimate means.
The Expo Coordination Bureau told local media on Friday that it was trying to control the distribution of group tickets to prevent unpredictable surges in visitor numbers. Group ticket sales have been kept strictly below 6.6 percent of the total from the beginning of the event until now. During the pre-sale period ending May 1, group ticket sales peaked at 70 percent of all tickets sold.
According to Tao, the villagers who did not want to visit the Expo were mostly elderly people who could not travel the 70 kilometers from the island to the Expo Park.
Residents of Xianghua Township need to transfer between two bus lines and two subway lines, which can take up to two and a half hours, to get to the Expo site.
Another good reason residents have for selling their government-provided Expo packages is the low average income on the island.
He Zhendong, a local operating a motor trishaw in Chenjia Town, told the Global Times Sunday that a lot of his neighbors sold their gift packages immediately because they decided to go was too expensive.
"My wife and I earn no more than 10,000 yuan ($1,464) a year farming and transporting passengers by the trishaw, so it is impossible for us to raise the money for another ticket or buy anything once we get inside the Expo Park," said He.
He, who sold his package for 280 yuan ($40.99), regretted that he did not manage to get a higher price.
Expo ticket gift packages have so far been distributed in Pudong New Area, Huangpu, Luwan and Jinshan districts, as well as Chongming Island, and are valid for June. Residents of other districts will receive their gift packages in the coming months.
