Millions of Chinese travel back home

Bloomberg

Chinese people are traveling in larger numbers domestically as the nation’s key holiday season kicks off, a sign that the end of Covid Zero is giving way to a rebound in economic activity.
Some 34.7 million trips within the country were made by air, road, rail or water, according to the Ministry of Transport. An additional 35.4 million trips were made on January 8.
Each day is around 40% more than comparable days in 2022. Roughly 2.1 billion trips are expected over the entirety of the 40-day Spring Festival travel period, called Chunyun, said transport ministry Vice Minister Xu Chengguang — nearly twice last year’s amount.
This year’s travel season contains the “most uncertainty” and is the “most complicated situation” of recent years, Xu said. He cited the coinciding peak of travel and the pandemic as factors in that assessment, which he also said contains the “greatest challenges.”