Why Does China Have Spring Festival Travel Rush?

Chongqing – As the largest human migration activity in the modern world, the Spring Festival travel rush has a deep economic motive and influence which partly tells the development history of modern China. iChongqing presented the video to illustrate the economic logic of this unique Chinese phenomenon.

The Spring Festival travel rush has long attracted worldwide attention for its scale and cultural elements, with that population travel intensively surging in a short period of time for a reunion with family. The reopening is expected to boost the economy for the new year, and it showed a strong signal in the transportation sector. 

On January 27, the number of national overall transportation passenger trips, including road, train, flight, and waterway, reached about 50.92 million, increasing by 83.1% compared to the same day in 2022, according to Caixin. 

All transportation ways peaked during the Spring Festival holiday from January 21 to 27. The train sector, for example, reported 12.19 million passenger trip numbers, up 34.6%.

The data of Qunar, one of China’s most popular online travel agencies, showed that train ticket booking increased by 28% compared to the same period in 2022. The two hottest train routes are between Guangzhou and Shenzhen and between Chongqing and Chengdu.

In addition, Yunnan Province sees a booming tourism market. The train ticket routes from Kunming to Qujing and Kunming to Dali also entered the top 10 hottest routes.