Across China: Chinese embark on New Year homecoming journeys

For the last week, Soyu has been pondering what she should take home as presents this Spring Festival.

The 20-year-old Tibetan is at university in Taiyuan, capital of north China's Shanxi Province. At last, she decided to buy a pair of leather shoes for her mother.

"My father passed away at a young age, and mother has been toiling on the farm, growing barley to sustain the whole family," she says. "She has been reluctant to buy new things for herself, and always wears my and my sister's used shoes."

Soyu will fly the more than 3,000 km from Taiyuan to Lhasa, and then take a bus to her hometown of Ngari Prefecture.

"Although traveling by plane is much more expensive than by train, it is worthwhile since I want to see my mother as soon as possible," she says.

Her deliberations are typical for Chinese returning to their hometown for family reunions over the Lunar New Year holiday. The 40-day Spring Festival travel rush witnesses about three billion passenger trips nationwide.

Zhang Xu had a much longer journey home than Soyu.

The 32-year-old worker in the United States has flown from San Francisco to a remote town in northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

"This is the first time I've returned home in five years," he sighs. Though he has brought back red wine as presents for family and friends, he is really thirsty for a taste of home.

"Foreign wine tastes good, but what I like most is still my hometown's bai jiu [white liquor]," he says. "Since getting home, I've been gathering with old friends, chatting in the local accent while drinking.

"When I've got a little drunk, I feel as if I've never been away."

China's 270 million migrant workers make up a major part of the travel rush.

Early on Saturday morning, 40-year-old Hu Hai, a migrant worker in the northern Tianjin Municipality, arrived at the inter-city bus station with three big suitcases.

Fearing that his cases would be squashed, he waited until all the other passengers had put their things in the luggage compartment. He then carefully placed his belongings in what little space was remaining.

His home city of Yishui in Shandong Province is only five hours' drive from Tianjin, but he has not found time to return home during the past two years.

All the three suitcases were stuffed with the Tianjin specialty snack mahua, fried dough twists, a cache which cost him over 1,000 yuan (160 U.S. dollars).

"My mother told me by phone that the mahua I brought back two years ago had gone stale," he explains. "So I decided to take more back this time."

Luo Ying'an is a migrant worker in Zhaoqing City of south China's Guangdong Province. In order to reach home in Laibin City of neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in the evening, he and his family set off all riding on a single motorbike at 4:30 a.m. one recent morning.

Preparing to depart, he told a Xinhua reporter that "it's going to be an exhausting journey since it's still dark and raining, but riding home will save me a lot of money."

According to Luo, a bus ticket from Zhaoqing to Laibin costs 360 yuan, so a round trip for the family of four would cost a total of nearly 3,000 yuan.

According to official research, last year's festival saw 600,000 migrant workers ride motorbikes from Guangdong Province mainly to Guangxi and Guizhou, the major exporters of labor.

With the opening of a high-speed railway linking the three provinces in December, many have abandoned the motorbikes this time around.

Whether by train, plane or automobile, the Chinese people are united in being keen to make the journey home at this time of year. Endi