CHINA’S TRAIN stations are packed with anxious travellers, the airports hum with traffic, the bus stations are hives of activity.
The world’s biggest annual migration has begun and, for the next six weeks or so, Chinese people will undertake 2.56 billion passenger trips as they head to their hometowns to celebrate lunar new year, or spring festival as it is known, the biggest date on the country’s calendar.
Airlines and trains all over the country have been added to cope with the passenger surge, which is up 11.6 per cent on last year, according to the Ministry of Transport.
Many will travel on the fleet of new high-speed trains this year, but rising costs in China means a lot will stick to the slow trains to get home as cheaply as possibly.
But get home they must.
“There is no spring festival if you are not at home,” is the mantra at this time of year. Everyone is weighed down with goodies for the family – bottles of incendiary baijiu liquor, crates of fruit, electrical goods.
Once home, children are expected to clean the family house and cook for their parents. Unmarried young women are harangued endlessly about not having found a man and presents of fruit and hongbao (red envelopes containing cash) are exchanged. Dumplings are eaten and baijiu is drunk.
Snow and sleet has slowed down many motorways and there are long delays. This being China, though, things work eventually, but there is a fair amount of pushing and shoving going on in various transport hubs. The trains get very crowded, with some passengers buying adult nappies because using the toilet on a 25-hour train ride to a far-flung province is not always an option.
One traveller, a woman surnamed Zhu who is 25 years old and comes from Fuqing in Fujian province – 1,500km from Beijing – booked her flight home 20 days ago, but the flight was cancelled.
“So now I have to fly from Beijing to Shanghai and then try to buy a bus ticket there to go back to Fujian. It is impossible to buy a train ticket from Shanghai to everywhere during these days, so the only way for me is to go by bus,” she said.
“My hometown Fuqing is in the Mixi mountain area, so it is very difficult to reach, and I know my trip will be really tough this time to go back home, but I’m going back, no matter what.
“I’ve already booked my new flight to Shanghai, God willing I can successfully find a bus ticket in Shanghai to Fujian.”
Another traveller surnamed Chang, who married a year ago, is celebrating her first Chinese new year with her husband. Both are single children of the one-child policy and both are under pressure to celebrate with each other’s parents.
“It was so painful arranging the trip back home this year, because both of our parents wanted us to come. Finally I gave up. So our schedule is that I go to his home town, Chengdu, on New Year’s Eve, stay till February 4th, then we go to my parents in Inner Mongolia,” she said.