Also referred to as the Spring Festival travel rush, chunyun is the world’s largest annual human migration
Chunyun (literally “Spring transport”) refers to the 40-day peak travel period around Spring Festival (aka Lunar New Year), which this year falls on 29 January. Millions of people take advantage of the extended time off from work and study to travel back to their home regions and spend the important festival with family. As a result, train stations and airports are packed, and tickets are expensive and hard to come by.
How big will chunyun 2025 be?
This year, authorities are estimating a record 9 billion domestic trips (of which car trips will account for 80%) will be made during the 40-day period of festivities, which began on 14 January 2025. It is hoped that travel and tourism during this period will boost domestic consumption at a time when the Chinese economy has been struggling.
New Spring Festival travel trends
As China Briefing notes, in recent years, there has been a growing trend of people combining their Spring Festival celebrations with tourism and celebrating with their families in a new destination. This is especially true among urban Millennials and Gen Z, many of whom find the pressure of returning home and spending time with more traditionally-minded relatives overwhelming.
Within China, the most popular destinations for Spring Festival travel are either warmer locations such as Yunnan and Guangdong, or winter destinations like Harbin and Jilin. Officials at the Ministry of Transport have predicted a 25% increase in travel for leisure purposes.
International travel is also popular with people from first and second-tier cities. With several new visa exemptions for Chinese tourists in place (including Thailand and Singapore), international journeys are set to boom. It is also hoped that China’s own new beneficial visa policies will attract foreign visitors to China. According to Xinhua, in 2024, 64.88 million foreign visitors travelled to China, an 82.9% increase from the previous year, of which visa-free entries accounted for 20.12 million visits.
