Rush home for Spring Festival

China started the Spring Festival peak travel season Sunday, with tens of millions of passengers, mainly migrant workers and college students, on the move in the world's largest seasonal migration.

The Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, falls on January 23 this year. It is the most important traditional Chinese festival for family reunions.

A total of 3.16 billion passenger trips are expected during the 40-day peak travel season, or Chunyun (Spring transportation) in Chinese, up 9.1 percent from a year earlier, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.

A majority of rural migrants take trains back home, as train services are much cheaper than other transport services. The homecoming is treasured as many go home once a year, while some only return once every several years.

At the railway station in Xining, capital of western Qinghai Province, migrant worker Luo Lirong raised her head now and then to look at the boarding notification board.

"After a whole year of hard work away from home, I can finally go back home to see my child," Luo said over an hour ahead of her boarding time. "I cannot pretend that I am not in a hurry."

China's railways alone will carry 235 million passengers during the period, the Ministry of Railways said Friday.

Liu Tienan, the NDRC's vice chief, the country's top economic planner, told the press Sunday that passenger transport during the period is not looking good as the enormous migration outweighs existing transportation capacities.