“There are 130 million migrant workers in China. They go home only once a year during Chinese New Year. This is the world’s largest human migration.”

This somber narrative from Fan Lixin’s award-winning 2009 documentary Last Train Home vividly illustrates the plight of hundreds of thousands of migrants who line up for weeks, struggling to get a ticket back to rural hometowns for Chinese New Year.

This year, Shanghai introduced a number of initiatives supposedly designed to ease the ticket crush, including online and phone booking. In early January, two weeks ahead of chunyun (increased passenger transportation around the holiday), we headed to Shanghai Railway Station ourselves to speak with migrant workers and see if the measures were working.

Twenty-something Gao Wenjing had booked online a ticket to his hometown Luoyang in Henan and triumphantly came to collect it from the train station two days later. Gao remembers last year’s harrowing experience all too well. “I queued for two entire days! But there were no tickets left,” Gao recounted. “Finally, I got to Zhengzhou with the help of my friends.”

Not everyone has been as lucky this year. For most, Pan Keqiong’s story is a familiar tale. “I spent two days queuing up in Suzhou and two days in Hangzhou and got nothing,” said Pan, 36. “Here’s my final chance.” After standing in line for a whole morning, the textile worker finally emerged with four tickets: three for her family and one for her brother-in-law. Pan left her hometown of Kunming 10 years ago. She currently lives in Changshu with her husband and one of two sons.

“We didn’t make it last year because we heard it was impossible to get tickets. But I really miss my little boy. I must go back this year,” Pan insists. After a hard four and a half days, she scored just four standing room tickets to Guiyang. From there it’s another 638 km to Kunming.

Machinery processing worker Wang Pingwei attempted to avoid the lines at the train station but gave up after two days of unsuccessfully trying to book a ticket at home. The 26-year-old says he earns between RMB5,000-6,000 a month, and that his final resort would have been to book a flight. Still, he wanted to save money if he could. His try at phone booking had been equally Kafka-esque: “There were a few times that I almost reached the final phase in booking when all of a sudden, the line went dead.”

To complicate matters, the government has just enacted a real-name system, meaning passengers must use proper identification to buy train tickets and can’t board without corresponding ID. While the intention is to prevent scalpers from buying too many tickets and exacerbating the rush for them, some migrant workers complain that the change works against them.

“I used to count on buying tickets from scalpers,” says department store security guard Huang Yadong, his voice full of disappointment. Four years ago, the 26-year-old came to Shanghai from Anhui with his whole family, including wife and parents. His wife works as a cashier, his parents as garbage collectors. “The new system makes purchasing harder,” Huang explains. “We used to always get tickets from scalpers. The seven percent mark-up was nothing compared to being able to go back.”

Those whose tactic was to intercept ticket holders in front of the refund ticket booth also feel disgruntled. Construction worker Meng Zhaowen, 49, has worked in Shanghai since 2008 and returns to Henan with his wife every year for Chinese New Year. Last year he managed to buy a ticket off another worker before the latter had refunded it.

“Now, the only choice is to queue up here,” Meng laments.

Other reports have angrily proclaimed discrimination, saying that the new measures make it hopeless for the lowliest of society who don’t own computers or who work hours at odds with ticket counters.

There are an estimated nine million migrants in Shanghai. According to China Daily, authorities have ascertained that even if all train tickets were reserved for migrant laborers ahead of the holiday, the supply would still fall short of the gargantuan demand. Regardless, for those who manage to procure them, their victory marks only the beginning of a long journey home.