Tang Jincheng strolled in the Hangzhou Northern Railway Station at daybreak Sunday to check if the air conditioner in the waiting room was working, and if extra tents should be set up in the square to keep travelers warm.
"Many of them wait overnight for a train ticket home," said Tang, head of the station. The low temperature has dropped to minus two degrees Celsius in the eastern city.
Tang is among some 2 million railway workers in the world's most populous nation who need to work long and hard in 40 days to come: China expects 2.32 billion passenger trips during the holiday rush before and after the traditional Spring Festival that falls on Jan. 26.
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Migrant workers are waiting for the train to Chongqing Municipality in a temporary wating room at Xiamen railway station in Fujian Province on January 11, 2009.
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The figure is nearly three times as big as Europe's population.
Ministry of Railways estimated 188 million of these would be train trips, an average of 4.7 million daily.
On Sunday, the first day of the six-week holiday rush, the Hangzhou Northern Railway Station expects at least 10,000 passengers. Tang's job is to ensure every one of them a safe -- if not cozy -- trip home.
For most Chinese, a train ticket during the annual holiday rush is among the hardest-won commodity. Ministry of Railways has promised to ease the bottleneck by 2012 but many people question "how".
Railways Minister Liu Zhijun has projected a "historic change" in 2012 when intensive investment would extend total track mileage to 110,000 km, including 13,000 km of passenger lines on which trains could run between 200 to 350 km per hour.
Yet the scenario offers little immediate comfort: even after the extension, the per capita rail lines in China will only be 8.5 cm, up from the present 6 cm.
Photos taken at tickets sale outlets, indicating travelers waiting in line, wrapping themselves up with quilts or sleeping on the floor, were seen at major Chinese websites since two weeks ago. Some waited for three days and three nights to get a ticket.