Chinese saddle up for Year of the Horse

This year brought a 25 percent ticket price increase. The hike was accompanied by an unusual first-ever national "public hearing," in which Chinese officials consulted workers and consumer representatives before the rise. State media reported - wrongly, sources say - that workers were happy to pay more.

The ticket buying is partly a byproduct of China's economic emergence. The lunar festival has been paramount for eons here. But, poor or rich, Chinese have never moved around as they do today - slowly breaking the Communist Party-instituted hukou system, which allowed only permit holders to live in a city.

With $300 billion in foreign investment and a thriving export market in the 1990s, more expendable income is available. The state has built some 100,000 miles of highway for a new domestic car market that is being felt this season.

Not surprisingly, too, the Spring Festival, is undergoing commercialization and higher media profile. Gifts of food are treasured. So especially are hong bao, the red envelopes of cash that are passed from parents to children, to friends' children, and from wage earners to nonwage earners, such as grandparents.

Wealth has brought to the city migrant workers who want to go home during New Year. The official estimate is 70 million, but more likely 125 million rural people - who are often found sleeping or eating en masse around urban construction projects - want to go home. Migrants leave two or three weeks ahead of the rush and account for the some 2 to 3 million rail tickets sold per day during that time.

Migrants are also prime users of the so-called "long-distance buses," that have become the bane of holiday travel. Double deckers that contain a "sleeping berth" on top, these buses have 28 seats for trips of up to a week. Yet they are notoriously crowded, unpleasant, and sometimes subject to highway hold-ups. A police car stopped one long-distance bus outside Shanghai last week and found more than 90 people on a bus built for 35.

Making it home before midnight tonight means the family has been together that year, a literal interpretation of family continuity, but one that carries weight here. Chinese have a special dinner, tell stories, offer toasts - and of late, some 700 million will watch a TV extravaganza, planned for six months, that involves a light show, dancing, and films stars. Later in the week is a time to visit family, friends, and former teachers.

Air travel is still an elite activity, but prices are dropping. Cong Ri, a Beijing computer engineer, wanted to fly home to Inner Mongolia for the first time this year. But, no tickets. His answer, after a day in line, was a "platform ticket." This ticket, usually used for family sendoffs, will allow Mr. Cong access to the platform where the train doors open. There he will give some money to a rail official to let him on the train. Once on, he will buy a ticket, but have no seat.

"I'm going to have to stand this year, it is the only way," he laments.

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