As Spring Festival, also known as Chinese New Year, approaches, the roads, rail lines and conveyor belts of China's delivery network are filling with an annual tide of packages — boxes of snacks, flowers, cakes and gifts moving across thousands of kilometers, from megacities to villages, from coastal workplaces to inland homes.
This year, the Spring Festival holiday falls on Feb 17, ushering in a weeklong public holiday from Feb 15 to 23 — a period marked by family reunions, travel and a surge in consumption. For many families, courier services have simplified holiday preparations.
Shao Fang, who works in Hainan province and is originally from Zhumadian in Central China's Henan province, recently sent several boxes of nuts, snacks and cakes back home. On previous occasions, Shao would return to her hometown early to prepare for the holiday. But this year, she ordered everything online.
"There's no need to go back early to prepare anymore," she said. "I just sent everything ahead, and when I get home, I can focus on being with my family."
Across China, similar parcels are moving in massive volumes. In warehouses, conveyor belts run continuously. In residential compounds, delivery workers stack and sort piles of boxes by building and floor, preparing routes that will carry packages to millions of households before the holiday.
The growing scale of Spring Festival deliveries reflects bigger changes in China's logistics and consumption patterns, said Liu Jiang, director of strategic planning research at the State Post Bureau of China.
"In recent years, the scale economies of China's postal and express delivery sector have continued to strengthen," Liu said. "The Spring Festival shipping surge not only directly boosts retail, warehousing and transportation, but has also become an important force in expanding domestic consumption."
At a J&T Express outlet in Luoyang, daily delivery volumes during the 2026 Spring Festival shopping season have risen about 30 percent year over year, according to Li Shaopeng, the site manager. The station has added extra shifts and increased vehicle frequency. Deliveries that once ran twice a day now run three times daily.
The outlet introduced two autonomous delivery vehicles this year to ease pressure on frontline couriers. Driverless carts transport parcels between sorting centers and pickup points, handling more than 3,000 packages a day along fixed routes.
For the delivery system, Spring Festival now functions as both a stress test and a platform to showcase its capabilities. For families, it has reshaped the rhythm of the holiday itself. As millions of packages move across highways and rail lines, the looming Spring Festival holiday is no longer measured only in train ticket sales — but in tracking numbers and the steady knock of courier workers at the door.