Spring Festival travel rush: 24 years steering the train

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The green, greasy, smelly, and over-crowded carriages stuffed with passengers rushing home are a shared Spring Festival memory for generations of the Chinese people.

Zhou Shuqiang, 45, became an assistant train driver 24 years ago, taking part in the world’s largest annual human migration for the first time. His career started on a diesel locomotive, which he says gave him a hard time.

"It was freezing cold at night. The temperature inside could go down to about minus 10. We used to boil hot water to keep warm."

45-year-old Zhou Shuqiang started his career as a train driver 24 years ago. /CGTN Photo

Worse than the discomfort was the disappointment on the faces of travelers who couldn't fit on the train.

"Back then, most of the trains were the old green ones without air conditioners. The trains were slow so we couldn’t put on more daily train services. As a railway employee, when I saw the dense crowd waiting anxiously at the station hoping to get home, I wanted to take all of them on the train but our hands were tied."

High-speed trains have partly solved the capacity problem during the Spring Festival travel rush. And Zhou was a test driver for the first Chinese-made bullet train in 2002.

From diesel locomotives to the high-tech cab filled with digital displays and buttons, over the years, Zhou has steered his trains to take half a million people home for Spring Festival.

Zhou Shuqiang. /CGTN Photo

After a quarter of a century, he says he's still excited to be in the cabin. "It’s not boring at all. Taking the passengers safely to their destination gives me a sense of pride. Every time I see passengers get off the train with their children and bags, I can see the smiles on their faces. They’re happy because they are finally home. When I see they’re happy, then I’m happy."

Before he gets into his cab, Zhou has to take three tests: get at least 80 points in a skill examination, prove his identity through fingerprint verification and pass an alcohol test.

Zhou said: "When I first became a train driver, the only high-speed trains I saw were foreign ones on TV and in the newspapers. I longed for the day when I could be a bullet train driver, driving a train made by ourselves at a speed of over 300 kilometers per hour."

2011: Zhou drives a train carrying Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. /CGTN Photo

Zhou achieved even more. In 2011, he drove a train carrying Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Now he has another dream, "I hope one day I can represent China’s bullet train drivers overseas, driving a Chinese bullet train on foreign soil.”

As China continues to promote its high-speed railway across the world, that day may not be so far away.