Flights Affected By Heavy Snow In Beijing (Photo : Getty Images)
Chinese started to travel home on Sunday to celebrate Spring Festival to beat the rush of travelers before the start of Lunar New Year on Feb. 8. China Railway Corp. estimated the number of early travelers at about 7 million people.
That is just a fraction of the anticipated 2.91 billion trips to be made across China between Sunday, Jan. 24, and March 3, reported Global Times. It represents a 3.6 percent increase compared to the number of trips that Chinese made in 2015 for the holiday, said the National Development and Reform Council (NDRC).
Wang Shuiping, an official of the Ministry of Transport, added that the bulk of the travels would be done on two weekends. The first on Feb. 5 to 7, the dates closest to the Lunar New Year, and the second on Feb. 11 to 13, the weekend right after the New Year when some would need to return to the city for their jobs or move to other relatives.
By mode of transportation, the NDRC said that of the 2.91 billion trips to be made, 2.48 billion trips would be by road, 332 million on rail and 54 million by plane. About 60 percent would be made across various provinces of China. Among those who would travel by land, 580,000 booked cross-regional carpool services of Didi, a car-hailing app, disclosed Huang Jieli, director of service of Didi.
With the huge crowd expected to use China’s railway system, the sale of noodles was banned on all mainland high-speed trains in a bid to reduce the different kinds of odor inside the coaches, reported The South China Morning Post.
Huang Xin, operations official of China Railway, explained the ban to the strong smell that noodles emit, but he said passengers who bring their own noodles would be allowed to eat the Chinese staple food on board.
According to data from Alitrip, the online flight-booking service platform of e-commerce giant Alibaba, the top destinations since 2014 to the present are Shanghai, Beijing, Guangdong’s Guangzhou, Sichuan’s Chengdu and Shaanxi’s Xi’an.
