China records increased passenger trips via railway during Lunar New Year

China's railway travel rose 11.5% to 121 million passenger trips during the nine-day Lunar New Year holiday period from last year's festival, which was celebrated over eight days, state broadcaster CCTV said on Tuesday.

CCTV also reported that 85.38 million tons of goods were shipped via the railway, an increase of 0.5% over last year.

Passenger trips via air travel totaled 22.05 million during the period, with the daily average of 2.45 million 7.7% higher than during the holiday period last year.

Daily average of flights rose 4.4% on-year to a cumulative 171,000 scheduled flights over the period, CCTV said.

Within China, travel for all modes of transport rose 8.2% to a total of 2.8 billion trips, CCTV said.

The nine-day holiday period marks the peak of the China travel rush recognised as the world's largest annual human migration. This year the travel rush period, also known as Chunyun, will last 40 days.

Popular outbound travel destinations were Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and others in the region, according to CCTV.

Passenger volume to Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Maldives and Kazakhstan increased significantly.

There were also significant increases in outbound travellers to destinations such as Turkey, Australia, Russia and New Zealand.

Box office sales during the holiday period exceeded 5.75 billion yuan ($832.37 million), state news agency Xinhua reported citing the China Film Administration. That was down from record sales of 9.51 billion yuan during the festive period between January 28 and February 4 last year, boosted by sequels to popular hit films.

This year, the racing comedy sequel "Pegasus 3" emerged as the highest-grossing film of the season, Xinhua said.

($1 = 6.9080 yuan)

-Liz Lee, Colleen Howe and Shanghai newsroom/Reuters