买票(mǎi piào) - to buy a ticket in Mandarin

买票 (mǎipiào) means "to buy a ticket", from 买 (mǎi), "to buy", and 票 (piào), "ticket". It covers train tickets, cinema tickets, concert tickets, anything you queue up or click through a website to pay for.

Being a verb-object compound, it splits apart the moment you need to specify which ticket: 买一张火车票 (mǎi yī zhāng huǒchē piào), "buy a train ticket", inserts the measure word 张 (zhāng) and the noun between 买 (mǎi) and 票 (piào) rather than keeping them stuck together.

The opposite, 卖票 (màipiào), "to sell tickets", differs only in the tone of the first character: 买 (mǎi, third tone, "buy") against 卖 (mài, fourth tone, "sell"). Mixing up the tone here genuinely changes who is handing over the money.