China's Spring Festival Travel Rush is underway. It's the world's biggest annual human migration. Workers and students in major cities kick off their journeys to rural areas to gather with their families. Starting from today, we bring you faces of ordinary Chinese on their trips back home. In this episode of our special series, our reporter Ge Yunfei takes us to meet a train driver who's been busy during the Chinese New Year for nearly a quarter of a century.

The green, greasy, smelly, and over-crowded carriages stuffed with passengers rushing home. Shared Spring Festival memories for generations of Chinese people. 45-year-old Zhou Shuqiang became an assistant train driver 24 years ago, participating the world's largest annual human migration for the first time. His career started on a diesel locomotive. He says that was a hard time.

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

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

ZHOU SHUQIANG TRAIN DRIVER "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 in 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 this high-tech cab filled with digital displays and buttons, over the years, Zhou has taken half a million people home for Spring Festival. After a quarter of century, he says he's still excited to be in the cabin.

ZHOU SHUQIANG TRAIN DRIVER  "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 SHUQIANG TRAIN DRIVER "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. "

Zhou achieved even more. In 2011, he drove a train carrying Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Now he has a new dream.

ZHOU SHUQIANG TRAIN DRIVER "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. Ge Yunfei, CGTN, Guangzhou.