Still hard to book tickets despite more methods

China's official website for booking train tickets has become one of the world's most frequently visited websites, as the massive travel period around the traditional Spring Festival begins. The Ministry of Railways (MOR) said Tuesday that the website got more than 1.4 billion clicks on Jan 9 alone, and 5.25 million trips were made via the country's railways, up 5.7 percent from a year earlier.

A soldier shows a woman how to book train tickets online at an Internet café in Taizhou, East China's Zhejiang province on Jan 11, 2012. The local police and military departments made an agreement with some Internet cafes to reserve special zones for migrant workers to book train tickets online. The tickets go on sale online and by phone booking systems two days earlier than at train stations or through authorized ticket agents. However, many migrant workers have no access to the Internet and do not know how to book tickets by phone, so they still have to wait for hours in line, but tickets for the most popular routes are snapped up within minutes of becoming available on the computer system. [Photo/CFP]