When China’s railway system attempted to modernize the way it sells its train tickets a number of years ago by offering them online at 12306.cn, many Chinese objected. Accustomed to standing in long lines like years past, some Chinese viewed the modernization as discriminatory against the old and the technologically-unsavvy.

Unable to adapt, the plight of China’s technologically non-proficient recently came to light in a China Daily news story in which a Ukrainian expat in Chengdu was seen helping some 50 migrant workers with their train ticket woes by buying them online (seen above).

And now with Spring Festival looming, anxiety over using the internet to buy train tickets home is at an all-time high over a controversy regarding an online verification test that some users have criticized as being “too hard”.

As with CAPTCHA or other online security devices designed to prevent automated bots from exploiting the system, the test is a simple question to ensure the user is a human being. In the case of 12306.cn, it is a multiple-choice question that requires users to “Click all the XXXs from the pictures below,” matching images to descriptions of things such as recorders, electric generators, fans and humidifiers.

However, due to the low resolution of the pictures and ambiguous questions, users have been struggling to answer correctly, leading to multiple complaints and some people mocking the verification system online by posting fake verification questions of their own, including “click on all the pictures of handsome men”, “click on all cartoon characters who are short”, and “click on all pictures of the Strait of Bosphorus.”

One netizen wrote, “Only a straight A student could pass this,” while another wrote, “I feel illiterate when I just try to buy a train ticket.” A third humbly asked, “Do I have to take an IQ test before buying a train ticket? … Actually, I just want to go home.”

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In response to the public outcry, China Railway has announced it will be adjusting it system to reflect the needs of its users. The verification question with the most wrong answers will be cut from the system. Since Tuesday, more than 36 million users used the 12306.cn website to purchase in excess of 6 million tickets. During the same period last year, more people logged in to buy fewer tickets.

Zhu Jiansheng, deputy head of the Computer Science Institution at the China Academy of Railway Sciences, said the difference proved that last year had “less ineffective and repeated logging in” of its users.