The Year of the Dragon is nearly two weeks away. The Lunar New Year is Saturday, Feb. 10, but in one part of East Asia, holiday travel is already underway.
In China, the Lunar New Year celebration is part of the eight-day Spring Festival holiday, and that means time for family reunions and travel.
The travel starts early. Chinese media track it over a 40-day long period — which started this past Friday.
The state-run Xinhua News Agency says the current season is already off to a big start. There were nearly 200 million passenger trips on that first day — up 20% from a year ago.
Chinese state television projects 9 billion domestic trips will take place this year. That's nearly double the figures from last year when China was just relaxing its COVID-related domestic travel restrictions.
More than three-quarters of those trips will be by car. However, trains also get a workout this time of year.
And the skies and airports will be busy.
China's state aviation regulator says domestic air travel will not only be up sharply from last year, but it will outpace travel from the pre-pandemic year of 2019 by about 10%.
Bookings for international flights are also up this year, with popular choices including Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea.
