Weekly Viz 2023-01-23

Spring Festival Travel Rush

Happy Chinese New Year! Last Sunday was Chinese New Year. Every year, in China, millions of people working or studying out of their hometowns will travel back home to reunite with families as the Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) approaches. This usually leads to a spike in domestic traval as early as 30 days prior to the New Year, and it is known as the ‘Spring Festival Travel Rush’. This week, I visualized the migration scale index data from Baidu Qianxi to show how the domestic travel increasing in the 21 days prior to the Chinese New Year, and how the pattern changes over year with the impact of the pandemic.

My Visualization

This visualization plots the migration scale index on a reversed time index, and puts 2019-2023 trends on the same chart to make it easier to compare.

Please notice that all the visualizations are designed for desktop view, so it is recommended to view them on a desktop device.

Dashboard link

Insights

• Domestic travel usually increases gradually and reached its peak at around 3 days prior to the Chinese New Year, then the traffic dropped suddenly as people arrived home and spend time with their families;
• The pandemic clearly had great impact on the Spring Festival Travel Rush – In 2021, during the first Spring Festival right after the COVID-19 outbreak, due to policy restrictions and health concerns, the migration scale is less than half compared to other years;
• And in this year (2023), after China lessens COVID-19 restrictions, the migration scale bounces back, and reached a similar level as 2020.

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