It’s the biggest movement of people in the world. Every Chinese New Year, millions of people in China head back to their family home from their place of work. TV news channels beam pictures of unimaginable crowds outside railway stations, waiting to travel.

In 2017, just shy of three billion journeys were undertaken over the 40-day holiday period. While the vast majority of journeys were made by road and rail, air travel is growing fast as Chinese travellers spend more of their disposable income on flying and celebrating the holiday overseas.

In its 2017 report, travel agent Ctrip predicted that there would be six million outbound flights over the Chinese New Year period. That’s still dwarfed by domestic land journeys, but it was the highest on record. Ctrip cited the most popular destinations as Thailand and Vietnam in Southeast Asia, plus Japan and further afield to the US and Australia.