I swear I'd never been so nervous logging on the Internet than on Friday, when train tickets for the first day of my Spring Festival holiday could be booked on 12306.cn, the official website for purchasing train tickets authorized by the Ministry of Railways.

Every piece of information had been filled in: My name, citizen ID number and the train number I wanted. To my right, there was another computer on which a piece of plug-in software to help grab train tickets, which I downloaded online and wasn't sure was useful or not, had been installed.

My strategy was very clear: As soon as it was 10 am, I would refresh the webpage and check for hard-berth sleeper train tickets. If it was sold out, I would instantly check for soft-berth sleepers. High-grade soft-berth sleeper class would be my last choice.

The strategy collapsed by 10:02. Within just two minutes, every type of train ticket to travel from Beijing to my hometown, a city in East China's Jiangsu Province, including seat and standing tickets, had been sold out. My order was placed in a hopelessly long queue, and I was soon reminded that it could be forcibly canceled.

To me, the only difference that 12306.cn brings is that previously, I had to queue in chilly winds before finding out no ticket was available, but now I could be faced with this reality in the comfort of my home.

To my surprise, my complaints about this to two of my friends were not echoed.

One was born in Central China's Anhui Province, and the other in Shandong Province in the country's east. Thanks to the newly built high-speed railway network, which covers their home city, thus making several trains available every day, both easily bought train tickets online, and there were still plenty of tickets left after they made their purchase.

One of them was so surprised, as she had fully prepared herself psychologically like I had, that she even became nostalgic and shouted, "The familiar chunyun (Spring Festival travel rush) feeling has gone, give it back to me!"

Her nostalgia was met with protest by me, as I had been forced to book a full-price plane ticket at three times the cost of a hard-berth on a train. Nostalgia always belongs to those who have reached a more advanced stage. For instance, when Chinese people today watch TV serials portraying life in the 1980s, they say they are inspired by that era and want to go back. But they don't really. They just forget how tough and poor life was back then.

In this sense, as for my nostalgic friend, she had become used to the hustle and bustle involved in getting one train ticket before the Spring Festival. She hasn't adapted to the new convenience, but she definitely doesn't want to go through all those painful memories again.

The nation is changing so rapidly that every generation has a "historical story" to tell. Old Beijingers often tell how they hustled to stock up cabbage in the winters decades ago; in the 1990s, there were long queues in front of securities companies where people waited anxiously for a chance to buy shares; in the 2000s, along with the boom in the real estate industry, commercial houses gradually have become tightly supplied commodities.

Each era brings something that the Chinese people spare no efforts and are prepared to wait overnight to buy.

But throughout all these years, high demand for train tickets during Spring Festival has been constant, which points to a single fact: There are just so many people in this country that if everyone wants to migrate at the same time, such a rigid demand cannot be properly satisfied.

Nonetheless, seeing my friends' nostalgia, I realize that we will have this "historical story" about train tickets someday in the future.

For decades, the Chinese experienced the joy and suffering of chunyun, the largest migration in human history.

But this year, for some, chunyun has already gone, although others in this colossal nation are still struggling to get one ticket to go home. While some book tickets conveniently online, others turn to more ways of transportation. We are in the middle of a "historical" moment.

The author is an opinion editor with the Global Times. chenchenchen@globaltimes.com.cn