Passengers wait for trains at the Changchun Railway Station in Changchun, capital of northeast China's Jilin Province, Jan. 26, 2013. The 40-day Spring Festival travel rush started on Saturday. The Spring Festival, which falls on Feb. 10 this year, is traditionally the most important holiday of the Chinese people. It is a custom for families to reunite in the holiday, a factor that has led to massive seasonal travel rushes in recent years as more Chinese leave their hometowns to seek work elsewhere. Public transportation is expected to accommodate about 3.41 billion travelers nationwide during the holiday, including 225 million railway passengers, (Xinhua/Lin Hong)
With the booming population, Manchester, Liverpool and other cities rapidly became global industrial centers. By the start of the 20th century, Britain was 70 percent urban.
During this process of urbanization, the UK's transport networks suffered similar stresses, with the new railways being built to help reconcile the gulf between old and new.
Eventually those Chinese rural migrants will also set down roots in the cities and become urban residents.
As urbanization accelerates, people have more chances to work near their homes, relieving the pressure on the big cities. And Chinese families are becoming increasingly smaller, making the Spring Festival reunion easier to achieve.
In addition, technological changes and the development of logistics and transport are relieving the pressure on the roads and rails.
People can have gifts delivered online for their parents rather than bearing bulky luggage themselves.
It's possible that the peak of chunyun will end sooner than we can imagine. Within a decade or two, chunyun may become a unique memory for our generation.
We can also celebrate chunyun in another aspect. It shows the country's new freedom of movement.
In the past, police regularly expelled migrants from the cities, but today a Chinese citizen can travel virtually anywhere in the country without restriction.
Chunyun might be stressful and frustrating for the public, but it also promotes national modernization.
Chunyun has proved a stress test for China's transportation infrastructure, and thus promoted programs such as highway construction and high-speed railways, which have also made China a new world leader in global transport.
And after going through the harshest test in the world, chunyun, they are also able to provide a strong backbone for economic development.
Admittedly, chunyun exposes the problems of the hukou (household registration system). The restrictions imposed by the hukou system and the failure of locals to accept outsiders are haunting problems.
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