|
BEIJING, Feb. 2-- Veteran train driver Zhou Li, 54, has driven all four generations of Chinese trains -- from steam locomotives to high-speed. Having spent two-thirds of his Spring Festivals driving a train, this year is Zhou's 31st Spring Festival travel rush. The Spring Festival holiday is a frenetic travel period in China when hundreds of millions of Chinese return to their hometowns for family gatherings, to visit relatives and friends or just for a break from city life. Zhou is one of many Chinese train drivers who have witnessed the fast development of the national railway network in connection with the changes of the world's biggest travel rush. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China 70 years ago, the speed of trains has increased sixfold while the length of the entire railway system has expanded from only slightly more than 20,000 km in 1949 to some 131,000 km by the end of 2018. Thanks to this enormous train network, the journey home for 413 million Chinese, the number of people who travel via train during the holiday this year, has become faster, more convenient and more high-tech. According to calculations based on archived reports by the People's Daily, some 31 million trips were made via train during Spring Festival 1957, which seems like nothing compared to this year's number. However, it still exerted a huge pressure on the country's transport system. The People's Daily even carried an editorial in 1959 urging short-distance travelers to walk or use bicycle wherever possible, to ease the burden on the public transport system. | 
