This Baidu heatmap shows massive scale of human movement over Chinese New Year

Baidu has launched a heat map of where Chinese travelers are heading to, coming from, and which routes are most popular during Chinese New Year, the country’s largest national holiday.

It’s a time when most Chinese either return home to their families or go on vacation, and it’s the largest annual mammalian migration on Earth. During the 40-day holiday period – which is called Spring Festival in Chinese — 3.6-billion passenger trips will be made across all modes of transportation (Note: most people only get eight days off).

Baidu gathers data from smartphones with Baidu Maps and other apps using its location-based platform to create the heat map. Baidu Maps alone has more than 200-million registered users and receives 3.5-million position requests every day.

The heat map updates every four to eight hours, showing the most popular destinations, points of origin, and travel routes. It includes a search function so you can see stats from specific cities and time frames. Here’s a few stats as of press time:

• The most popular destination is Beijing, followed by Chongqing. The hub cities in Hunan and Guangxi provinces tie for third.
• Beijing is also the most popular city to leave, followed by Shanghai and Guangzhou.
• The trip both to and from Chengdu and Beijing take up the top two most popular routes.

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This article by Paul Bischoff originally appeared on Tech in Asia, a Burn Media publishing partner.