Spring Festival travel rush, a battle against all odds, Yisuo.net, Blog translation

After queuing for a long time and feeling emotionally exhausted, the authorized ticket outlets either said there were no tickets or only had standing tickets, and those were only for temporary passenger trains. There were absolutely none available for regular services. They kept saying that tickets would be available "tomorrow" or kept pushing from the morning to the afternoon. Every time I walked out of Guotai (an authorized ticket outlet), I couldn't help but let out a loud scream in People's Park. How could the authorized ticket outlets not have even one ticket for a normal train service? After getting home, when I opened my web browser, a news item popped up: "Man with machete storms ticket office, robs 17 sleeper tickets." So this was what it took to buy a train ticket. I summed it up with two Chinese idioms:茅塞顿开 (enlightened) and 醍醐灌顶 (epiphany). When I took a taxi to Guoan Ticketing, it was the same story - only standing room tickets on temporary trains, and worse still, the destination was Ji'an instead of Macheng in Hubei province where I wanted to go.