A Quiet Chinese New Year

Last Friday (12th Feb) was Chinese New Year. In a normal year around 2.8 million trips would have been made by Chinese people traveling to visit and stay with relatives over the Spring Festival holiday. During this year's Spring Festival, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, travel in China was down by at least 50% on last year.

Thanks to Baidu maps we are able to see when, where and how Chinese people travel during the Spring Festival. Baidu's mobile map application has over 350 million active users and receives over 10 billion location requests every day. This provides Baidu with a unique insight into the movements of the Chinese population over the Spring Festival.

Every year Baidu releases its Qianxi (migration) visualization. This interactive map allows you to explore which national highways were the most congested over the Chinese New Year Spring Festival. It also allows you to visualize the movements to and from China's largest cities over the holiday period. This year the number of people making city to city journeys during the Spring Festival dropped by 50% compared with last year. Ten provinces, including Heilongjiang, Beijing, Jilin, Hebei, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, Zhejiang, Liaoning, and Jiangsu, saw a decline in travel exceeding 55%.

With many people not traveling to spend time with their families this year Baidu has also seen an uptick in the number of visitors to local outside attractions. In Beijing the Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven Park and Beijing Zoo saw a significant increase in visitors during the Spring Festival. In Shanghai the Chenghuang Temple, the Bund, and the Oriental Pearl Tower also saw a large increase of visitors during this year's holiday.