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GUANGZHOU, Feb. 4-- Migrant worker Liao Guiren was more than excited to take a bullet train on his Spring Festival journey back home, the first time for the middle-aged man. Each year during the past two decades, the 45-year-old had to endure an exhausting eight-hour bus ride from his workplace in south China's Guangdong Province to his hometown in the city of Guigang in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, for a large annual family gathering. But this year, the bullet train cut his travel time to less than three and a half hours. "The traffic jams on the roads during the holiday must be worse," Liao said when having his ticket checked at the railway station in Guangdong's Zhongshan. "The expressways back home must be more crowded than the railway station." Liao said it was no easy job to buy the bus ticket back home during the festival. "I used to line up for hours at the station for tickets, and the prices often ticked up due to high demand." However, it took Liao a couple of minutes to buy the train ticket back home on his smartphone this year. Liao is among a growing number of Chinese travelers who have benefited from a more convenient and efficient way to return home during the Spring Festival travel rush in recent years. It is estimated that the annual travel rush that lasts 40 days will see 413 million railway trips across the country, up 8.3 percent from the previous year. | 
