The ongoing Spring Festival rush, which is dubbed “the largest human migration on Earth” with some three billion journeys to be made this year, has left some mega cities across the country - like Beijing - eerily deserted, as millions of people have headed to their hometown for the annual family reunion. /CFP Photo

Some of the normally crowded and boisterous downtown streets in Beijing appear more like sedate “parks”, where people and vehicles meander instead of struggling in the usual annoying traffic jams. /CFP Photo

The congested Beijing subways where people are normally squeezed like sardines have also witnessed a drop in users, with the carriages and tickets halls left rather devoid of passengers one week ahead of the Spring Festival. /CFP Photo

Beijing is home to some 8.2 million non-locals, accounting for about 38 percent of the city’s total population as of 2015, according to a report released by the Beijing Statistics Bureau and the National Bureau of Statistics in January last year. /CFP Photo

According to China News, people leaving Beijing amid the 40-day “Chunyun” in 2013 exceeded 9 million, which accounted for nearly half of the city’s population. In 2016, some 400,000 passengers left Beijing through railways on the first day of Chunyun with millions of trips made from Beijing during the travel rush, leaving the city relatively deserted. /CFP Photo