As hundreds of millions in China flock home to celebrate the Year of the Sheep, the world’s biggest human migration places extraordinary pressure on roads and railways.
Chinese tradition requires people to gather at their family home before the Lunar New Year begins -- on February 19 this year -- with authorities expecting more than 2.8 billion trips to be taken over the festive period.
Rail is one of the favoured ways to travel and while historically there have been endless queues at the ticket windows, China’s official train booking website 12306.cn is helping to relieve congestion in stations and kiosks.
But with such huge demand users say it can be still be an exercise in hair-tearing frustration. Posters on social media say the booking website is “more difficult to access than the Diaoyu Islands” -- the uninhabited East China Sea archipelago disputed between Beijing and Tokyo, which calls them the Senkakus.
There are, however, new tactics in the battle.
Kelly Gan, a 27-year-old accountant, explained: “I was using a program that refreshes the page every five seconds to grab a spot as soon as it was available on 12306.cn. I basically did it all day long, from when I woke up until I slept.”