Police fail to deter ticket touts seeking a prosperous new year

Dressed in a well-cut light grey Western suit, Mr Li does not look like the average migrant worker waiting at the main Guangzhou railway station to go home for the Spring Festival.

The Hunan province native is actually a failed businessman who has turned to ticket scalping in an attempt to make a killing out of China's massive yearly travelling rush.

Ticket touts are the bane of the migrant workers making their annual trip home and this year there are more of them than usual, even though the railway stations and bus terminals are crawling with security forces.

Mr Li, a former PLA soldier, quickly worked out that one of his potential customers was a reporter and owned up to what he was doing.

'I am a tout. There are 1,000 of us here. What do you want to know? Come this way and let me tell you what's going on here,' he said, leading the way to a quiet part of the station.

Mr Li, who claimed to have owned restaurant and karaoke businesses in Guangzhou before gambling his wealth away, said this year he had made only about 500 yuan (HK$470), taking a 10 to 20 yuan cut on each ticket. He said he had obtained the tickets from other scalpers who bought blocks of tickets by queuing up numerous times.

Reports say some touts can make as much as 10,000 yuan a day.