Families, Foreign Visitors, and a Surge in Passengers

A Festive Spring Festival Travel Rush

Every Chinese New Year's Eve, Han Ru, a captain on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed train, adorns her carriages with festive decorations. Spring calligraphy couplets and lanterns emblazoned with the character "Fu" symbolize good fortune, and it's her way of extending New Year's greetings to her passengers.

This year's Spring Festival travel rush, or chunyun, saw a significant increase in passenger flow compared to previous years. During the eight-day holiday, 96.26 million railway trips and 18.24 million air trips were made.

For Han, it was her 11th Spring Festival travel season. "Typically, the passenger flow is relatively light in the first few days of the holiday, but this year, almost every day has been fully booked," she shared. "On the third day of the Chinese New Year, we transported over 2,000 passengers on a single high-speed train from Beijing to Shanghai, most of whom were families visiting relatives or traveling for leisure."

Airlines also experienced a surge in passengers. Flight attendants decorated cabins with festive elements and served special treats to passengers. Li Yitao, a flight attendant with Capital Airlines, recalled a memorable moment on the first day of the Chinese New Year. "We surprised a young passenger with a birthday cake and card on his flight from Guangzhou to Beijing. It was an unforgettable memory for him and his mother," he said.

Gong Zhimin, a chief flight attendant with Shandong Airlines, noticed a significant increase in families traveling with children. She and her crew prepared paper crafts and coloring books to keep the young passengers entertained.

The increase in foreign visitors was another notable trend this year. Qiu Xuejie, a flight attendant with Shandong Airlines, attributed this to China's expansion of its visa-free travel policy. "On the evening of the third day of the Chinese New Year, half of the passengers on my flight were South Korean. One of them even asked for a booklet of excerpts from the Analects of Confucius that he had seen on Xiaohongshu," she said.

For Wu Kun, a captain with Shandong Airlines, this year's Spring Festival was different. On New Year's Eve, she piloted a flight that landed in Beijing in the evening, allowing her to celebrate the holiday at home for the first time in years. "Being a pilot keeps me away from home, but it has also taught me the true meaning of reunion," she reflected.