Train tickets for Spring Festival rush see major changes

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Train tickets for the first day of the upcoming Spring Festival went on sale on Wednesday – and this year, travelers are seeing some changes to their booking process.

The annual travel rush coincides with the Chinese New Year holiday, and lasts around 40 days. It begins some 15 days ahead of the first day of China's lunar New Year and ends 25 days after.

This year, the rush is expected to begin on February 1 and end on March 12.

China’s Spring Festival celebrations, which fall on February 15 this year, see the largest annual migration of people on earth as hundreds of millions of Chinese travel back home at the same time, mostly on trains and buses.

The China Railway Corp predicts the national railway will see at least 30 million more people traveling than last year.

A staff member debugs a ticket vending machine at Kaili railway station in Kaili City, southwest China's Guizhou Province, January 2, 2018. /Xinhua Photo

Compared with previous years, 2018 ticket sales during this Spring Festival are witnessing three major changes, with the biggest being an upgrade to the train tickets selling system.

More tickets will be available for sale, with the number increasing from the current 10 million to 15 million per day.

WeChat payment, one of the most popular online payment methods in China, has been added to the payment option, and is expected to increase the amount of tickets sold online from 70 percent to 75 percent.

The purchase of online tickets also usually involves a laborious process of "human-verification tests," which will be cut by 15 percent this year.

As of the end of 2017, the national railway mileage reached 127,000 kilometers, of which 25,000 kilometers were high-speed railways, accounting for 66.3 percent of the total high-speed railways in the world.