Massive Chinese New Year Migration Begins

It’s the largest annual human migration. Hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens make their way home for the Lunar New Year.

[Zhang Fengling, Student from Hebei Province]:
"You definitely have to go home for lunar New Year, I think that goes for all Chinese people. It doesn't matter where you are, you just have to go home for the New Year."

Even though the lunar New Year isn’t until Monday, trains, planes, and buses are already overrun with travelers.

[Xiang Fan, Duty Station Manager]:
“Each day now there are about 430 buses going out, carrying about 12,000 people. The passenger flow this year surpasses the transport capacity, and it should be the highest so far. Compared to last year, it should have increased by about 10 percent."

That's an estimated 3.1 billion passenger trips over 40 days, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. In hopes of making holiday travel easier, the Ministry of Railways launched a new online ticketing system. But it does little good for migrant workers like Gao Yongxu, who have no access to the Internet.

[Gao Yongxu, Migrant Worker]:
"I queued up for five hours, and still ended up getting a standing ticket. There were no seats left, everyone had bought them online but we don't know how to do that, it's just too troublesome."

For many migrant workers, this is the only time of year they can return home, often to see children who have been raised by relatives.

But even those who could go online complained the ticketing system was far from helpful.

[Yang, Student]:
"If you keep on trying to log in, you get through after about 20 minutes, and after that when you click to purchase the tickets, it comes up with a ‘server busy’ notification. Every time you reach this stage, you have to log in again, which takes more than 20 minutes."

And many found that the tickets they ordered online never were processed—even though their payment was.

Despite China’s rush to expand its travel network, it’s a long line to the New Year.