Passengers are pictured at a platform of Harbin Railway Station in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, Feb. 2, 2026. (Photo by Yuan Yong/Xinhua)

　　BEIJING, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- At 12:40 a.m. Monday, train K4069 pulled out of Beijing West Railway Station, becoming the first passenger train to depart from Beijing as part of the 2026 Spring Festival travel rush. On it were travelers either heading home or setting out on leisure travel, as the country's annual tale of movement and reunion began to unfold.

　　The Spring Festival, also known as Chinese New Year, falls on Feb. 17 this year, and the official holiday lasts nine days. The annual travel surge, known as chunyun and often described as the world's largest human migration, is expected to generate a record 9.5 billion inter-regional passenger trips during the 40-day period running from Monday to March 13 this year.

　　Of this total, road trips remain the dominant mode of travel, accounting for approximately 80 percent.

　　An estimated 540 million passenger trips will be handled by the country's railways, while the civil aviation sector will see 95 million passenger trips. Both the overall scale and daily peak traffic of rail and air travel are expected to hit new highs.

　　While passenger trips are tipped to reach a new peak, journeys are also set to be smoother.

　　China's expressways now cover 99 percent of cities with a population of over 200,000 and the country's high-speed railway network has exceeded 50,000 km, reaching 97 percent of cities with an urban population of more than 500,000. Aviation services, meanwhile, currently reach 92.6 percent of prefecture-level administrative units.