Our new colleague in Beijing Lin Yang writes:
In China having connections can make all the difference. But when the first-stage ticket sales plan for the 2008 Olympics was announced earlier this year, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympics –or the vaguely sinister-sounding BOCOG– vowed to give everyone an equal chance: tickets would be sold by public lottery, and there would be no free tickets, staff tickets, discounted tickets or any of the other euphemisms for funneling the best seats to the rich and powerful.
But even in the case of the hallowed Olympics, such good intentions have apparently run afoul of the country’s “to get rich is glorious” mentality. Half a million people applied for twenty-six thousand tickets to the opening ceremony, but one man got twenty. According to the Yangzhou Times, the lucky Mr. Chen repeatedly won the lottery, and has made a fortune selling the tickets at double or triple their face price. Mr. Chen reportedly says he has no use for “luck;” instead he has guanxi, Chinese for special connections with the people in charge.
But don’t despair. If you have neither luck nor guanxi, the internet is full of those who do. Olympic scalpers have been advertising “abundant tickets for various games, as well as opening and closing ceremonies” obtained through “internal sources.” A journalist reporting on the Olympics for NetEase, a web-based newspaper, called a scalper in Shandong Province to express his interest, and was told it was too late for the 1500 renminbi ($200) opening ceremony ticket. But, good news, there are still six or seven 3000 RMB tickets if he’s interested-and if he’s willing to pay 6000 RMB each.
The journalist was cautious. How could anyone win so many tickets through the lottery, he asked? “You don’t really think I was that lucky do you? There are millions of people trying to get 20,000 tickets.But I have friends in the BOCOG,” the Shandong man said impatiently, “You want tickets? Move fast!”