The southern province of Guangdong accounts for 35% of the total of migrant workers (followed by Zhejiang 8.7%, Shanghai 7.4%, Jiangsu 6.0% and Beijing 5.8%). Once a year many of these 40 million people leave Guangdong province to spend Chinese New Year with their families back home.

Around Chinese New Year tens of thousands of migrant workers stream day after day from all different directions towards Guangzhou station.

Those who haven't been able to purchase a ticket in advance have to queue for hours, even days, in front of booking-offices. Day and night the train station is besieged by an enormous crowd of people. Since only those travelers are permitted to enter the station building whose train leaves soon, the majority has to wait on the main station square outside the building. Some sleep, some eat - but all wait for a train that brings them back to their hometowns. Police is everywhere to keep the masses as organized as possible. Still, thieves and crooks do their foul work.

After each announcement some hundreds, some thousands of people rise and walk through one of the few, heavily guarded, gates where they show their tickets and move towards the platform.

For days an invisible vacuum cleaner seems to suck the crowd into the station building and into the many trains for at the eve of Chinese New Year most of the migrant workers are gone. All of a sudden the station looks empty and deserted.

For now the big outset is over - it will happen again next year.