CCTV News (Focus Interview): January 23 is the 24th day of the 12th lunar month, and it has entered the second week of the Spring Festival travel rush, with more and more traffic on the road. The 2025 Spring Festival travel rush will last for a total of 40 days from January 14 to February 22. From the overall scale, it is expected that the cross-regional flow of people in the whole society will hit a record high, reaching 9 billion people during the 2025 Spring Festival travel rush. Among them, the national railway is expected to send more than 510 million passengers, with an average of 12.75 million passengers per day, which is also expected to set a new record.

As the Spring Festival approaches, railways, highways and civil aviation across the country usher in the peak of the Spring Festival travel rush, and various railway hub stations are crowded with people. Tonghua Railway Station, located in Jilin, has also ushered in the busiest time of the year.

Tonghua Station, located at the foot of Changbai Mountain, southeastern Jilin Province, this year is the last Spring Festival travel rush of this second-class station with a history of 88 years.

In the past 88 years, Tonghua Station has sent 110 million passengers. At present, the trains running at Tonghua Station are all green ordinary speed trains, reaching Beijing, Qingdao, Dalian and other places. They are an important hub node station in southeastern Jilin Province.

This Spring Festival travel rush in 2025 is the last Spring Festival travel rush undertaken by Lao Tonghua Station. During the Spring Festival travel rush, the average daily passenger flow reached 2,000, and many passengers only realized that this was the last time they came to the old station.

Although Tonghua Station is located important, the infrastructure inside the station is old, the equipment and facilities are aging, and it cannot be renovated and upgraded under the existing conditions. In addition, there are fewer trains and slower speeds, which can no longer meet the travel needs of passengers. Due to limited transportation capacity, it also seriously restricts local development.

The construction of the new Tonghua Station, 8 kilometers away from the old Tonghua Station, is currently being accelerated. Soon, the newly completed Tonghua Station will be relocated to retain the passenger function of the old station. It is a comprehensive passenger hub station integrating high-speed rail, green-skin ordinary speed, long-distance passenger transport and bus. It can achieve "zero transfer" and "zero transfer" for passengers, making it easier for passengers to travel.

At the end of this year, the new Tonghua Station will be opened with the new line Shenbai High-speed Railway. The Shenbai High-speed Railway is 430 kilometers long and will connect seven cities (prefectures) including Shenyang, Fushun, Tonghua and Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. The end point is Changbai Mountain.

Compared with the old station, the new Tonghua station has changed a lot. After completion, the new Tonghua Station has a total construction area of ​​nearly 30,000 square meters, and will be the largest station in southeastern Jilin Province. The waiting room gathering scale can accommodate 1,500 people at the same time, which is more than 4 times that of the old station. The overall scale will reach 6 platforms and 14 lines, and 3 platforms and 9 lines will be added to the old station, which will greatly improve the railway transportation capacity and transportation efficiency.

At that time, Tonghua will not only officially enter the high-speed rail era, but also the rich cultural and tourism resources in the local area will be greatly developed.

The advantages of the new station are obvious, but the old Tonghua station has been in operation in 1937 for 88 years. The old station carries too many memories of people.

Standing the last shift and drawing a perfect end to the old station is the wish of every employee in the station. Lao Wei is an old railway, and his family is basically railway workers. From the age of 18 to the present, he has been a passenger transporter for a lifetime. He is about to retire in April this year. The last Spring Festival travel rush at Tonghua Station is also the last Spring Festival travel rush for Lao Wei.

Over the past 42 years, Lao Wei has witnessed the changes in train tickets from hard board train tickets, soft paper train tickets, magnetic card train tickets to the current paperless era.

The changes in train tickets reflect scientific and technological progress and social development, and have also witnessed the transformation and transformation of China's intelligent and digital railways.

At the end of 2025, the newly completed Tonghua Station will open 22 pairs of high-speed trains in 11 directions including Shanghai and Tianjin, based on the existing 12 pairs of green ordinary trains. It is estimated that the number of passengers will be sent each year from the current 510,000 to 2 million.

In order to witness this last Spring Festival travel rush with passengers traveling from south to north, Tonghua Station specially made a photo frame for everyone in the waiting room.

Just as the old Tonghua station entered the last Spring Festival travel rush, more new stations also ushered in the first Spring Festival travel rush.

Fengzhen North Station is a new high-speed rail station and Jidayuan High-speed Railway. Jidayuan High-speed Railway is a Jining through Datong to Yuanping High-speed Railway connecting the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Shanxi Province. The opening of Fengzhen North Station along the route has greatly improved the travel conditions of Fengzhen citizens.

In addition to Fengzhen North Station, the newly opened Shanghai-Suzhou-Huzhou High-speed Railway Line and the newly opened stations on the Nanzhu High-speed Railway Line are all experiencing the first Spring Festival travel rush. New routes, new stations, new passengers, new staff, a brand new experience brings new challenges.

After the adjustment of the national railway's first quarter train operation chart on January 5, 2025, Fengzhen North Station added trains on the basis of 10 high-speed trains, which suddenly expanded the travel circle of local people in Fengzhen.

The first Spring Festival travel rush at Fengzhen North Station ushered in the peak of passenger travel. During the Spring Festival travel rush, the average daily passenger flow of Fengzhen North Station was nearly 3,000 people, twice that before the Spring Festival travel rush.

The Spring Festival travel rush carries the strong homesickness and family affection of hundreds of millions of Chinese people, and the traditional custom of "going home for the New Year" is deeply rooted in everyone's heart. Starting this year, "New Year's Eve" has been included in the statutory holiday, and the Spring Festival is 8 days off, which makes the concentration of passenger flows higher around the Spring Festival. The 40-day Spring Festival travel rush starts with the adjustment of the first quarter train operation chart of the national railway on January 5. After the map adjustment, the national railway arranged 13,028 passenger trains, an increase of 230 from the previous period; transportation capacity, service quality and operating efficiency were improved. The railway line is getting longer and longer, and there are more and more cars, and it is running faster and faster, providing better guarantees for a safe Spring Festival travel rush, an orderly Spring Festival travel rush and a warm Spring Festival travel rush.