the heroism of returning home for Spring Festival

Spring Festival is a month away, but apparently the whole issue of getting home for the festival is a big one for QQ readers–and lots of students are traveling home soon.  QQ BBS editors put out a request about a week ago asking people to send in their Spring Festival travel (Chunyun) 春运 stories from now until 1/25–and since a lot of the actual travel won’t have taken place by then, what they really are talking about is stories of what it takes to arrange for transport home.  As Wikipedia notes:

The high traffic load usually begins 15 days before the Lunar New Year,
and lasts for around 40 days. This period is also called Spring Festival travel season, or Chunyun period. The number of passengers during the Chunyun period has exceeded the population of China, hitting the 2-billion mark in 2006.

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A few responses from readers:

Spring Festival travel is a worry for poor people–what is there to share here? Have you been to the train stations and had a look?

I’m a student, and our school didn’t manage to get tickets for us.  I went and lined up myself for over 2 hours, and then all I could get was a standing-room ticket!   For a more than 20 hour trip!  Tomorrow I’ll be going home–I don’t dare think of it!

I wasn’t able to get a ticket, at any rate. 

I don’t know how to go home, I don’t have enough money?