Those who live outside China and plan to come here in the future over the Lunar New Year holidays, think twice. Unless you plan well in advance, you could get stranded somewhere. Like I am now.

I’m in Sichuan province. I came this morning from Beijing, and I must say the one-way plane fare from Beijing to Chongqing was cheap, about $80 U.S. It wasn’t hard to find a ticket either.

But that’s leaving Beijing. Returning to Beijing is another matter. There are no plane tickets on Tuesday, when I want to return. Not even first-class tickets. Everything is sold out. There are a few tickets for seats on flights out of Chengdu to Beijing. But that’s a four-hour bus ride from where I am now.

This China Daily story says air traffic over the lunar new year period is up 21 percent over last year. Well, I’m suffering the result. Road traffic is also insane. This Xinhua story says 227 million of China’s 1.3 billion people hit the roads over the holidays.