The Spring Festival is approaching as the Chinese prepare to celebrate their New Year on February 5. Many travels and trips are conducted during the annual celebrations, which is why it is sometimes referred to as the ‘largest human exodus’ or ‘largest human migration’. And the rush ahead of the Chinese New Year has just started, with record-breaking numbers expected once more.
According to estimates, almost 3 billion trips will be made during the Festivals. This represents an increase of 0.6% compared to last year. Most of these trips will be conducted by car – 2.46 billion, while 413 million will be by train and 73 million by airplanes.
China launched 10 new railways in December to deal with the enormous numbers of travelers expected. These new railways expanded the already longest network in the world by another 29 thousand kilometers, with more than 4700 trains in operation before February 5. Meanwhile, the country has scheduled 532 thousand flights during the travel rush. This is an increase of 10% compared to the celebrations of the Year of the Rat.
About 7 million Chinese tourists are expected to travel abroad during the Spring Festival from 100 Chinese cities to nearly 500 destinations in more than 90 countries worldwide.
Last year, 6.5 million Chinese citizens travelled overseas during the celebrations, while in 2014, it was just 4.7 million, a clear showing of the increase in travel. Countries in the Southeast of Asia are expected to be the favored destinations, with Thailand and Indonesia on top of the Chinese wish-list.
Cities like Beijing, Shenzhen and Dongguan are all expected to experience large numbers in terms of outflow, seeing the big numbers of migrant workers. Shanghai, Zhengzhou, Guangzhou and other cities are also expecting large outbound travels. This was reported by Chinese technological company Tencent.
They also added that most of the Chinese travelers during the Chinese New Year holidays (53%) are people between 18 and 30 years old. 24% of the total number are people between 31 and 40 years old. This shows a clear trend of the enthusiasm of young people to travel domestically or around the world, with less than one quarter of travelers being aged over 40.