China’s annual Spring Festival travel rush faced a new peak on Saturday, with 1.22 million passengers transported by the Shanghai Railway Authority, according to the Global Times, becoming “the largest single-day total of any Spring Festival travel season since 1956.”
It is said in the Global Times article that:
From February 10 to February 23, it transported 13.4 million passengers, 2.35 million more than in the same period last year.
The Spring Festival travel rush, also named Chunyun in Mandarin, usually takes 40 days, starting 15 days before Lunar New Year’s Eve and ending 25 days after. Migrant workers and college students always rush between cities and small towns during the time period for family reunions. 2013 Chunyun started from January 26 and will end on March 6. According to China Daily, people will make 3.4 billion trips during this year’s Chunyun, setting a new record.
2009, Beijing West Railway Station during Chunyun – people are rushing to buy tickets and catch trains. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. No rights reserved.
Every year during Spring Festival, buying tickets for Chunyun is the hottest topic in China. Here is a news video from CCTV International News published on January 24, talking about the transportation and tickets problems of this “world’s largest human migration.”
SEE CHINA 