Lunar New Year & the Largest Annual Human Migration
For 1.5 billion people, Lunar New Year means spending time with family and friends, eating big meals, shopping, and setting off fireworks. It also means travel. Lots of travel.
Over a period of 40 days — known as “chunyun,” or Spring Festival— millions of Chinese will go home or travel abroad for the holiday. Whether by plane, train, automobile, or motorcycle, it is not uncommon for travelers to spend upwards of 20 hours to reach their destination. Collectively, chunyun is the largest annual human migration.
This year’s holiday, which peaked last Friday on the New Year celebration, is shaping up to be no exception. The Chinese government anticipates that around 3 billion trips total will be made during the Spring Festival travel rush, which extends through March 2.
Air travel is expected to top 65 million trips total, with 30,000 flights added to ease strain on the system. The Beijing Capital International Airport, seen below on February 18, is the busiest in the country and hub for many travelers and tourists during Spring Festival.
Air traffic to China, particularly during holiday seasons, will shift dramatically with the late-2019 opening of the Beijing Daxing International Airport, seen below under construction. Beijing Daxing is on track to become the world’s largest airport at 18 square miles.
While planes remain a popular form of travel in China, the main event is rail. Last year, the Spring Festival saw 10.96 million railway trips on a single day. Just this week, the total number of railway trips on a single day – Wednesday, February 22 – beat last year’s record, with 12.1 million railway trips taken.
It’s no secret that travelers during Lunar New Year can spend hours waiting on train platforms, crammed into aisles, and hunched over small dining tables. To ease the burden, the China Railway Corporation added about 1,500 railway services this year. Frequent, high-resolution imagery can help detect changes in railway traffic during peak holiday season.
Bullet trains have an impact on the Lunar New Year travel rush, but their implications are much more profound. China was already home to the world’s longest bullet-train network, and it’s investing a lot of money to keep it that way. The government has dedicated 800 billion yuan ($119.71 billion) to continue its goal of expanding the railway system to encompass more than 93,000 miles.
Crucial to this massive transportation system is a set of sixteen north-south, east-west railways that connect the countryside and rural towns with China’s urban centers, like Shanghai and Hong Kong. Construction is happening at a rapid clip (see viral video of railway built in under 9 hours), and dramatic changes in the landscape can be tracked via satellite imagery.
In many ways, Lunar New Year and the mass migration accompanying it, are emblematic of a rapidly growing China. Planes, trains, automobiles, and large infrastructural changes are the hallmarks of an economy assuming its position on the global stage. High-resolution satellite imagery helps us see those changes and put them into a global perspective — even (and especially) during holidays!
From all of us at Planet, Gong xi fa cai!
