The annual mass migration of Chinese folks has kicked off… with millions of people travelling back to their hometown to celebrate the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year).
The crowd at Beijing’s train station (Image from Xinhuanet)
There are hundreds of millions Chinese citizens who left their rural hometown to work in relatively prosperous cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen etc… lots of these migrate-workers would travel back to their hometown to celebrate the Spring Festival with their family and friends before getting back to work again weeks later.
The travel mass creates a huge logistic challenge for Chinese transportation system; Guangzhou alone is expecting over 13 million of train passengers during the two weeks period (prior to CNY)… about two to three times more than their usual capacity.
Despite the chaos, the Chinese agencies have managed to handle the challenge pretty well over the years. Last year’s situation was troublesome because of the snow storm, but the travellers can go home with a blessing weather this year.
