Spring festival travel sees more diverse, efficient homebound trips

NANNING -- Twenty-one years ago, Wei Shouyi, a migrant worker in Foshan, South China's Guangdong province, endured an 18-hour battle against the elements as he joined a massive, wobbling armada of hundreds of thousands of workers making the long journey home for the Chinese New Year on motorbikes.

Today, Wei's 700-kilometer journey to his village in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region is much more convenient. Behind the wheel of his own car, he cruises along smooth expressways, cutting his trip home down to just six hours.

"In 2004, a dozen of us from the same village would gather our motorcycles and ride together. It was a mind-boggling sight as well as exhausting," said Wei, 44. "Since I bought a van in 2010, and later a car, the motorcycle has become a memory of the not-so-distant past. In my village, no one rides back from Guangdong anymore. Nearly everyone drives."

The evolving travel experience of Wei mirrors a greater transformation across the country. As China kicked off the Spring Festival travel rush on Feb 2 this year, the world's largest annual human migration is expected to generate a record 9.5 billion inter-regional passenger trips during the 40-day period running from Feb 2 to March 13.

Yet, the story is no longer one of peril and desperation. An increasingly expanding transport network has reshaped the Chinese dream of "going home."

In 2013, the sheer volume of homecoming motorcycles reached its peak, with 1.1 million trips recorded in Guangdong alone, where most labor-intensive factory work was concentrated. These workers, unable to secure scarce train tickets or afford air travel, took to the national highways.

Today, those roads are far less crowded with motorcycles. At a national highway exit in Wuzhou, which once served as a mandatory checkpoint for motorcycles entering Guangxi during chunyun, police officer Zou Dan has noticed a striking change.

"You only see a few scattered motorcycles now, and they are mostly people living right on the border of the two provinces," said Zou. "Our focus has shifted entirely to managing the massive flow of private cars on the expressways."

This shift is largely driven by a surge in private vehicle ownership and a transition to clean energy.

According to Huang Guoxun, deputy head of the transport department of Guangxi, new energy vehicles (NEVs) are leading the self-driving trips. In Guangxi, NEV travel is expected to jump by 72.2 percent this year, making up a fifth of all highway traffic, during the Spring Festival travel rush.

While the roads are crowded, the railways remain the overarching theme of the Spring Festival migration.

China's total operating railway mileage nationwide has increased from 146,300 km to 165,000 km during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025). The expansion represents a 12.8 percent increase during the five-year period, according to the China State Railway Group Co Ltd.

From 2021 to 2025, China's operating high-speed railway mileage increased by 32.98 percent from 37,900 km to 50,400 km, making the country home to the world's largest high-speed rail network.

For many, the high-speed rail is the great equalizer. This year, China's national rail authorities are expected to handle about 540 million passengers.

At the same time, the "green trains" — a traditional nickname for old-style Chinese passenger trains that have carriages typically painted green with yellow stripes — are still in operation in the high-speed railway era, providing a cheaper and more convenient alternative for passengers going to and from some smaller stations during the busy Spring Festival travel rush.

Perhaps the most notable change in the 2026 Spring Festival travel rush is the profile of the air traveler. Once considered expensive and luxurious, flying has become a practical option for migrant workers such as Ma Changwei.

Ma, who works at a subway project in Nanning, Guangxi's capital, recently found himself unable to book a high-speed rail ticket to his home in Central China's Henan province.

Ten years ago, his journey would have ended there, or turned to the black market scalpers for an overpriced train ticket at the peril of getting a bogus one. This year, he spent 1,600 yuan (about $230) on a flight to Zhengzhou, capital of Henan.

"It's expensive compared to the train, but it only takes two or three hours," said Ma. "Many of my coworkers from Sichuan and Henan are doing the same. If the high-speed trains are full, we turn to the airlines."

The numbers do back up Ma's claim. China's civil aviation authorities are expected to see about 95 million passengers this holiday season, a historic high.

"On the first day of chunyun alone, we saw an 85 percent seat occupancy rate," said Jiang Zhiming, a marketing manager at China Southern Airlines' Guangxi branch. "The demand is simply explosive."