Spring Festival Travel: Planes, Trains or Automobiles?

The Chinese New Year travel period, known as Chun Yun, began this past Sunday and will last 40 days. More than three billion passenger journeys are expected to take place before the mass migration ends. In other words, prepare yourself for some transportation challenges until at least February 16. To make your holiday a little easier, here are some travel options, along with what you should know or avoid.

The majority of Spring Festival travel will involve the roads, with the number of projected journeys around 2.8 billion. Unless you have a car, you’ll need to rent one (assuming you have a Chinese driver's license). Not only can you expect rental fees to be higher than usual but you'll need make plans as early as possible, as dealers are reporting nearly full bookings at the moment. If you lack the necessary license, look into hiring a driver, especially for trips around Beijing.

If you’re taking the easy way out and flying to your destination, you’ll be part of one million passengers per day boarding flights in China. Short of getting to the airport with extra time to pass through security, there’s not much you can do to ensure that everything stays on schedule. Just pack a good book and expect plenty of delays.

If those options are out, try and squeeze onto a train. Officials expect over five million passengers per day to travel by rail. To make things easier, they have opened up online ticket purchasing for all trains (not just the high-speed lines). However, since the end of December, reports have been coming out that the online system may be more trouble than it’s worth. One problem is that an astronomical amount of visitors is swamping the site, frequently rendering it inaccessible. (The average rate for daily site traffic in January has been one billion people.) We tried checking out the site ourselves, but only got this far:

If you can’t or don’t want to purchase tickets online, you’ll have to queue at a ticket office or at the station. Tickets can only be purchased 12 days in advance, and they go quickly. (Plan to get in line early and don't be surprised if tickets are sold out by the time it's your turn at the counter.) Expats will also need to show their passports under the "real-name" rule instituted last year. If you don’t want to stand in line, you can attempt to buy tickets through third-party websites at a higher cost, though there are no guarantees that they will be able to get you the desired train, date or time if spaces sell out quickly.

If all else fails, you can hitchhike, hop on a motorcycle or just run.

Photos: Xinhuanet.com, 12306.cn