12 hours on 2 wheels in the drive to get home
Print Edition
Migrant worker Zhang Desheng was under no illusion about the ordeal of a nonstop 12-hour motorbike ride in winter, but the excitement of getting home for the Lunar New Year made it one he was willing to face.
“I was so excited that I couldn’t get to sleep until 2:30 this morning. I’m dying to see my wife and son,” Zhang said shortly before hitting the road a week ahead of the Spring Festival holiday.
His hometown in east China’s Jiangxi Province is more than 700 kilometers from Fuzhou, capital city of neighboring Fujian Province, where he is a construction worker.
With intense competition for train tickets, saddling up proves to be a good option for many.
Most of the country’s many millions of migrant workers would move heaven and earth to return home before the Spring Festival.
This year, the 40-day travel rush, the world’s largest seasonal migration of people, will see 3.6 billion passenger trips, nearly 260 million of them by train, according to a government forecast.
Dwarfed by demand
Despite the turbo-charged development of China’s railways, their capacity is still dwarfed by demand, as trains remain the first choice for long-distance journeys.
Zhang failed to get a train ticket. However, he didn’t let that get him down. Instead he prepared for a motorbike journey becoming wearingly familiar after identical experiences in recent years.
Over the past few days, he has busied himself securing a mountain of belongings to the bike. Among them new clothes and shoes for his wife and literary classics for his son.
This year Zhang has joined a group of workers riding from Fuzhou to their hometowns in different parts of Jiangxi.
Amid high spirits, the motley band are cautious about the arduous trek.
Wrapping in a cotton-padded jacket, a waterproof coat and a pair of leather knee pads, Xiao Xianfu used tape to swathe his shoes in two layers of Styrofoam. “In my experience, that works well. The feet are the most vulnerable part to the cold during a motorbike ride,” Xiao said.
Another veteran rider, Huang Yugen, planned to spend the night at a rest stop even though nonstop travel would get him home sooner.
“Safety is the most important thing,” he said.
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