Chunyun may vanish in a single generation

This year's chunyun, or Spring Festival travel rush, has started well before Spring Festival itself.

The peak of chunyun in the last few years has marked the most dramatic point in China's switch from an agricultural society to an industrial one.

Chunyun is often a source of stress. Many are anxious that they won't be able to get tickets.

Various online tips, which teach people how to sleep comfortably on extremely crowded trains, show ordinary people's frustration.

But while today chunyun seems like nothing but a source of frustration, in a few decades we might be looking back at it nostalgically.

Spending Spring Festival at home is a deeply rooted tradition which will continue long into the future. In comparison, the difficulties of chunyun appeared only in the last few decades, as Chinese society began to transform itself.

The bulk of chunyun travelers are the migrant workers who move from countryside to city, spending their working life in the metropolises but the Spring Festival with their families back in the village.

They typically reflect China's transformation from an agricultural society to an industrial one. It's these migrant workers who clog up the rails and roads in such vast numbers every year, as they struggle to collect their pay and head back to families they haven't seen for months.

It reminds me of Britain in the 19th century. The development of a variety of industries, such as spinning and shipbuilding, made people pour into the cities from the remote countryside.