Nearly 50 million passengers were estimated to crowd trains, buses and airplanes Saturday as China's post-Lunar New Year travel rush began, with many struggling to find tickets.

An estimated 48.9 million trips were made Friday as revellers ended week-long family reunions and started to return to work and school, the communications ministry said on its website.

Similar numbers were expected to be on the move until Tuesday as China's most important holiday came to an end with travel numbers up about 10 percent compared to the same period last year, it said.

Travellers try to get on a train at a railway station in Quzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province February 3, 2007. [newsphoto]

"With so many people travelling it was impossible to buy a ticket at the railway ticket office," said Yang Lina, a Beijing office worker who arrived at the capital from neighboring Shanxi province.

"My father had to use his relations with the railway bureau to get me a ticket, but even then I had to pay for the most expensive ticket."

Yang was not alone in using China's famous "guanxi" or "relations" to buy tickets, with the Beijing News running a strongly worded editorial criticising suspected backdoor dealings between rail bureaus and ticket touts.

"What does it mean when you are first in line, but you cannot buy a ticket?," the editorial asked.

"Either ticket scalpers are hoarding tickets or people in the ticket office are dealing tickets through their relationship networks."

The Chinese are expected to take a record 2.17 billion passenger trips on planes, trains, cars and buses for the Lunar New Year that fell this year on February 18.

The transport crush has worsened each year as China's economy has improved, giving millions more the means to travel. An estimated 140 million migrant workers have also rushed to get home and then back to work.

The government has added hundreds of extra train trips per day for the 40-day travel season from February 3 to March 14 but even those are struggling to keep up with demand.

With the return rush beginning, China's major cities were awash with travellers with Beijing's train stations, airport and bus depots expected to handle 500,000 people per day over the next 10 days, Xinhua News Agency reported.

About 620,000 train passengers arrived in the eastern metropolis of Shanghai on Friday, prompting the local railway bureau to add 566 extra trains over the weekend, it said.

In Guangzhou, capital of China's booming Guangdong Province, nearly 150,000 train travellers arrived on Friday, with most of them migrant workers from Henan, Sichuan and Hunan provinces, it said.