Spring travel

Traditionally, families gather together during the Chinese New Year. In modern China, migrant workers in China travel home to have reunion dinners with their families on Chinese New Years Eve. Owing to the large number of interprovincial travellers, special arrangements were made by railways, buses and airlines starting from 15 days before the New Years Day. This 40 day period is called chunyun, and is known as the worlds largest annual migration.More interurban trips are taken in mainland China in this period than the total population of China.

In Taiwan, spring travel is also a major event. The majority of transportation in western Taiwan is north south direction long distance travel between urbanized north and hometowns in rural south. Transportations in eastern Taiwan and that between Taiwan and islands are less convenient. Cross strait flights between Taiwan and mainland China began in 2003 as part of Three Links, mostly for Taiwanese businessmen to return to Taiwan for the new year.