China-Europe freight trains make more than 20,000 trips in 2025

China-Europe freight trains made 20,022 trips in 2025, according to the China State Railway Group Co., Ltd.

The value of goods transported by these trains in 2025 reached 67.7 billion U.S. dollars.

The freight trains now connect 232 cities across 26 European countries and 128 cities within China.

Factories in many places across China have already been operating in full capacity as early as one month before the Spring Festival, the country's grandest traditional festival, to respond to people's ardent hope and enthusiasm for the Chinese New Year.

Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, falls on Feb 17 this year.

At a lantern plant in Nanli Village in north China's Shanxi Province, from cutting the wire to welding the frame, from pasting the silk cloth to drawing the patterns, nearly 100 workers are working in close collaboration.

In the structuring workshop, workers are using welding torches to weld ordinary iron wires into shapes such as dragons, phoenixes, and horses amidst flying sparks.

Meanwhile, the craftsmen are mounting carefully selected silk fabric onto the iron skeleton, making sure the form of dragon head, leaping horse, and other figures to be upright and dignified.

At a major cut flower farm in Xixian New Area of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, eight production lines are operating at full capacity to meet the demand for the upcoming grand festival.

Each stalk of flower takes only one hour from picking to finished product, ensuring it is shipped to all parts of the country in a fresher state.

The farm offers a variety of flowers, including anthurium, a star product in recent years for its colorful patterns and auspicious meanings.

This kind of flower originally grew only in tropical rainforests, but advanced technology has enabled various flowers to be cultivated in different seasons and regions.

The 50,000-square-meter greenhouse adopted intelligent IoT environmental control system, which can acquire real-time information on temperature, humidity, light, wind speed, and pests and diseases, and technicians can remotely control the system at the terminal to ensure the plants are in optimal growth condition.

Such precision regulation allows flowers to grow vigorously while also blooming according to order demand, thereby improving the supply efficiency during festive periods.

This year's Chinese New Year flower season started taking orders a month earlier than last year, and the current order volume has exceeded 3 million yuan, an increase of 30 percent compared with the same period last year, and the total order amount is expected to exceed 10 million yuan, according to operators.

The flowers are not only sold to many domestic cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu, but also exported to overseas markets such as Singapore and South Korea.

The thriving business has also boosted local employment. Currently, the dozens of full-time employees at the farm are all from surrounding villages and towns, and the farm also hires hundreds of seasonal temporary workers every year.