China's 40-day Spring Festival travel rush kicks off in China

China's annual Spring Festival travel rush, also known as chunyun, officially kicked off on Tuesday, during which an estimated record number of 9 billion trips are expected to be made in the 40-day period of festivities.

As passengers have been packing their bags to embark on reunion trips filled with joy and the country braces for the largest annual human migration, observers and economists predict that the upcoming holidays will see a consumption spree, which is set to provide a vivid display of the vitality and dynamism of "an economy on the move."　

At 00:02 a.m. on Tuesday, the Beijing West Railway Station saw the first regular-speed passenger train K4159 departing from the city during the Spring Festival travel rush.　　

China Railway Beijing Bureau is expected to send 39.37 million passengers, an increase of 740,000 over 2024.　

A total of 75.74 million railway tickets had been sold as of 4 p.m. on Sunday since the start of Spring Festival travel ticket sales on December 31, 2024.　

(Reported by Liu Chao; Edited by Zhou Jing)