我所见识过的三大中国春运奇观

Top three things I have known about transportation during Chinese Spring Festival

我所见识过的三大中国春运奇观

1. Tickets sell out within seconds

Train tickets are sold out in no more than 30 seconds once they are released. And you will find that even tickets for several days later are unavailable as long as they are with a departure date within 10 days before or after legal Chinese New Year holidays.

2. It takes half a day to go across a bridge

Traffic jam is another everlasting theme for people working and living in one place but with hometown and relatives in another city. Same with me, but I get lucky I don't have to go across the horribly crowded Humen bridge in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, where people claim that it takes half a day to get through in holidays like National holidays,  Qingming Festival, May Day Holidays, any Chinese holidays you can name it.

我所见识过的三大中国春运奇观 我所见识过的三大中国春运奇观

And you will find it will always be one way traffic jam in highway during Spring Festival since most of the people have a hometown in inland cities and make a living in developed coastal cities. And they will be trapped on the highway twice, once on their way back to hometown, and the other one back home.

 

我所见识过的三大中国春运奇观

3. Chickens and ducks join the traffic jam

I guess that this is the special one in Guangdong area. Chinese people, more specifically, Cantonese, enjoy eating chicken in festival and the chicken from hometown tastes better than that got from market from their perspective, and they prefer to deal with it by themselves before cooking, so… There may be a lot of chickens and ducks having the chance to experience the traffic jam before they are served on the table. God bless them all, wish they are not gone with the wind half way back home.

我所见识过的三大中国春运奇观

P.S. Part of the pictures above are taken from website years ago, but I just came across similar situation during my journey back from hometown to house today.

Happy and safe journey to you all who are on the way back same as me.