The Spring Festival the most important holiday on China's lunar calendar. People are expected to return home, spending a few precious days with their family members. This year's Spring Festival Rush kicks off today, for those with eager hearts longing for home.

Passenger flow, ticket office, information center and a waiting area. These are all signs that the Spring Festival transportation peak is on.

Railway authorities set January 30th to March the 10th this year's travel peak. During this period, railways will serve 2.54 billion trips. Although facing huge pressure from increasing passenger numbers, railway workers are well prepared.

Passengers wait to board a train at the West Railway Station in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 30, 2010. China's railways are expected to transport 210 million passengers during the 40-day travel peak starting from Jan. 30, as people return home for family reunion in the traditional Spring Festival beginning from Feb. 14 this year and then go back to workplaces. [Gong Lei/Xinhua]

A railway worker said, "We keep broadcasting information to passengers, informing them of each trains' arrival and departure."

Real-name train tickets are a freshly adopted measure this year. The first train using this ticketing system left Guangzhou Station this early morning, carrying 15-hundred passengers to Shaoyang.

To better cope with the increasing number of travelers, trains from Shenyang, U'rumqi, Lanzhou, and Kunming stations were deployed to ease the surge at the Guangzhou station.

Trains departing from Shanghai are seeing hikes in passengers too. More and more people are headed to Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan.

China's train system will sell 210 million more tickets during the 40-day 2010 Spring Festival Transportation period, up nearly 10 percent year-on-year.