For the upcoming Spring Festival which starts on Jan. 27, almost 3 billion trips across China are expected to be taken. This early, train tickets for a lot of destinations are no longer available.
In anticipation of the surge of ticket purchases, China Railway Corporation, the country’s rail operator, started to sell train tickets 30 days before the Chinese New Year which is a traditionally marked by family reunions. People who have attempted to buy tickets between Dec. 24 and 28 could no longer find any available, China Daily reported.
Online Ticket Sales
Using a software that is supposed to boost chances of buying a rail ticket by almost 70 percent by paying 50 yuan more per ticket no longer works even if thousands of requests are made by ticket buyers. On Dec. 26, China Railway sold 12.343 million tickets, 75.4 percent, or 9.3 million, bought online.
Xi’an is the top destination, followed by Wuhan and Changsa. To meet the increase in demand, National Railway Administration head Yang Yudong said 3,570 pairs of trains would start to operate when the new schedule becomes effective on Jan. 5. The agency expects passenger capacity to go up 7 percent compared to a year ago.
Breaking Records
Railways across China took 14.41 million trips during the 2016 National Holiday. It established a new record for railway passenger capacity and broke any daily passenger capacity of past Lunar New Years. Yang expects the railway to handle over 14 million trips for the 2017 Spring Festival.
Besides train travel, another 58.3 million trips by plane are expected to be made for the Spring Festival, according to estimates of the Transport Ministry, Reuters reported. Chinese travelers go through long lines, delays and traffic just to make it home for the Chinese Lunar New Year.
Other than dining with the family, Chinese watch movies during the Spring Festival. Among the films that would be shown are “Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons 2” and “The Village of No Return.”