A tired boy leans on handrails in front of the Guangzhou Railway Station after snow and ice delayed the train to his hometown in Guangzhou city, South China's Guangdong province, on Feb 2 during the 2016 Spring Festival travel rush. [Photo/IC]

It's that time of the year again as millions of passengers begin scrambling for train tickets. Although the Spring Festival is still a month away, Thursday marks the start of the travel rush with the beginning of ticket sales online and via phone. From Saturday, passengers travelling on Jan 13 can buy tickets directly from train stations.

Standing in long lines to buy tickets and then waiting in equally long queues for ticket-checking are pains that every traveler had to bear. But this year technology could ease some of the headaches.

This year's Spring Festival falls on Jan 28, 2017. The Spring Festival travel season, or chunyun in Chinese, lasts 40 days between Jan 13 and Feb 21, 2017. It is the largest-scale annual human migration in the world.