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This is News Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
Some 260 million Chinese people are expected to travel by rail during this year's "chun-yun", the Spring Festival travel season.
According to the China Railway Corporation, the passenger volume during this year's 40-day spring festival travel rush will be 8 percent more than last year.
Chun-yun is the largest annual human migration in the world. Millions of Chinese travel between their workplaces and their hometowns around the Spring Festival, the Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on Jan. 31 this year.
The New Year travel season ranges between Jan. 16 to Feb. 24 this year. During this time, an additional 340 trains have been laid on to meet the demand.
We stay in China. Renowned film director Zhang Yi-mou could face a fine of more than 7 million yuan, or 1.2 million U.S. dollars, for birth-control violations.
In an interview with Xinhua News Agency, Zhang and his wife Chen Ting admitted to giving birth to three children before they married two years ago.
Chen said they delayed getting the marriage certificate amid worries that Zhang's identity could be exposed during that process.
Zhang Yi-mou, one of the most popular Chinese filmmakers, made his directorial debut in 1987 with Red Sorghum and has won many awards worldwide. He was chief director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
Chen rejected claims that they enjoyed privileges for the children's hu-kou accounts, or the Chinese household registrations for citizens.
China's family planning policy was introduced in the late 1970s to rein in the surging population by limiting most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two, if the first child was a girl.
People who have more children than the family planning policy stipulates will be fined.
After calculations based on the combined household income, Zhang could be fined some 7.3 million yuan.
Zhang said he admitted the wrongdoing and was ready to take any consequences. He said as a public figure, his birth violations had exerted bad effects in China.
Zhang's story has ignited a firestorm of online public ire for celebrities who have more children than the policy allows.
You're listening to News Plus Special English.
