Man buys 8 rail tickets to beat Spring Festival crush

With eight train tickets and five transfers, it may sound like someone is heading for the South Pole, but in fact it is how one young man plans to return home during the holiday crush.

The modern day Phileas Fogg, Wang Dong, a native of Deyang, Sichuan province, is a second-year PhD student at Fudan University in Shanghai. Rather than going through the hassle of buying a direct train ticket from Shanghai to Deyang, the 27-year-old designed a unique railway route home to avoid having to buy train tickets during the holiday crush.

The trip is about 2,000 km, including transfers in five cities. He will leave Shanghai at 1:20 pm on Feb 8, travel through Nanjing, Hankou, Yichang, Dazhou, Chengdu and arrive at his final destination, Deyang at 11:50 am on Feb 9, Lunar New Year's Eve.

Wang researched the railway sections that have readily available tickets and arranged to transfer at those stops.

"I had barely any difficulty buying tickets in these sections," Wang said.

Tickets on the direct trains from Shanghai to Deyang are in short supply.

"There are only two direct trains. The first year in Shanghai, I lined up for five hours at the train station to buy the ticket," Wang said.

As Lunar New Year approaches, millions of Chinese are traveling home by any means possible. A record 3.4 billion trips are expected to be made during the crush, which runs from Jan 26 to March 6. The rail network is expected to handle 225 million trips.

Buying a train ticket may become a challenge.

In 2011, Wang designed his roundabout route home. "People assume that the transfers will take time, but in fact, my trip is 12 hours quicker than the direct train," he said.

The direct train between Shanghai and Deyang takes 34 hours, while Wang's trip takes about 22 hours.