Are you on your way home?

The annual Spring Festival travel time has entered again, and family reunion has always been the top priority for Chinese people during the New Year. Some people say that the Spring Festival travel rush is the world's largest migration of people. In fact, the Spring Festival travel rush is also a window to observe the changes in China's society.

Year after year, the Spring Festival travel rush remains grand, but many changes have also happened quietly. By understanding these changes, we will understand the "Chinese romance" that belongs to every family and a contemporary China full of warmth and vitality.

The Spring Festival travel rush has changed

This is my father's first time flying. Along the way, he took photos in novel ways and posted them on WeChat Moments. I went to the airport to pick him up, and as soon as I met, I was anxious to share my experiences on the way with me.

My parents' Spring Festival travel memories began in the 1990s. At that time, young people in the countryside went to the coast to travel. From Foshan, Guangdong to Fengjie, Chongqing, they had to take the train to Yichang first, then turn to the water route to the county town, and then take a rural bus for more than an hour to reach the lovely red brick house on the hillside.

From my parents’ memories and narratives, I found that the Spring Festival travel rush has changed.

At that time, the Spring Festival travel rush also needed to grab tickets, and it was really "grabbing". Often, I have to queue up all night at the train station with my luggage one or two days in advance just to grab a long-distance station ticket to get home. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to grab a ticket home if I can't make an appointment to buy a ticket through my mobile phone.

But my mother told me that when I think of the old and young people in the family looking forward to a definite return, this is a kind of happy waiting.

A few years ago, on the day the high-speed rail was opened in my hometown, many villagers made a special trip to the station to "look at the high-speed rail". Soon, everyone also took the high-speed rail. The "Thousands of Miles of Jiangling in Li Bai's poem "returned thousands of miles a day" shines into reality more than a thousand years later.

With the economic development and the improvement of transportation, the journey back home is taking less and shorter, the choice of transportation means is more and more, and the experience of returning home is getting better and better... These heartwarming changes are all the stable happiness in ordinary people's lives.

In recent years, I have also noticed that more and more people around me have started the "reverse Spring Festival travel rush". "New Citizens" bring their families to the city for the New Year, experience the convenience and fun brought by modern urban life, or start a warm Spring Festival trip, which has given new ways to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new and family reunion.

According to transportation and other departments, 9 billion people will travel during the Spring Festival travel rush this year, setting a record high. From this huge number, we can see a flowing China, a vibrant era, and at the same time, we can also see a happy China in the lights of thousands of families.

The luggage is lighter