As the annual Spring Festival approaches, people who work far away from home are turning their thoughts to going back for the weeklong holiday. It is estimated that people will make 2 billion or more trips during the Spring Festival period, of which, it is predicted, 320 million will be made by train.

Every year, the demand for train tickets to travel around the beginning and end of the seven-day national holiday soars. The railway authorities respond by maximizing the frequency and capacity of trains during the period. In order to allow and encourage people to make their plans earlier, the railway authorities are allowing passengers to purchase tickets for ordinary trains 58 days in advance and for temporary trains 40 days in advance during the holiday period.

This means on Thursday, people will be able to buy a ticket online for Feb 7, Spring Festival Eve, the peak day for travel.

Because of the fierce competition for tickets, software has been developed and used in previous years to gain an advantage in buying tickets. So in order to make the process fairer, the ticketing website now blocks such software from purchasing tickets by using complicated pictures as a means of human user verification.