BEIJING, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- China ushered in its largest annual population migration on Tuesday, 15 days ahead of the Spring Festival, or the Chinese Lunar New Year.

This marks the first "chunyun," or the Spring Festival travel rush, after UNESCO inscribed the Spring Festival on the intangible cultural heritage list in December last year.

Nine billion passenger trips are expected during this year's travel rush period that ends on Feb. 22, with both rail and air passenger trips set to hit record highs.

During this travel season, 7.2 billion road trips and over 90 million civil aviation trips will be made. Over 510 million passenger trips will also be handled by the country's railways, with an average of 12.75 million trips daily, an increase of 5.5 percent over the previous year.

In China, the 40-day travel surge will see hundreds of millions of people return to their hometowns for family reunions.