VIDEO: China’s Holiday Traffic Is Every Driver’s Maddening Nightmare Come To Life

In Malaysia, we’re no stranger to traffic jams. We often have our own ways to circumvent the congestion, whether its secret routes or timing our journey just so. And even if we are caught in a real gridlock, we feel we emerge stronger, talking of them like battle scars. 

But even Malaysia’s most sanity-testing jams don’t make for strong comparison against those found in China – the most populous country in the world, with the largest concentration of vehicles in the world, by far.

The jams over there are next-level, the kind involving thousands upon thousands of vehicles sandwiched together that not even dozens of wide lanes can’t contain, as seen in footage like this captured via drone-mounted camera. Honestly, they look eerily similar to apocalyptic city evacuation scenes in movies.

In some of the aerial shots, many cars can be seen with their doors open; drivers and passengers being able to walk about the sea of of stationary cars and trucks scattered in the middle of a highway.

These were taken near and above a toll booth not far from Beijing along the G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau Expressway during the peak turnaround period, involving millions of travelers returning to China's capital from all corners, by car and by air.

A heavy fog reportedly blanketed the area on Tuesday, further aggravating the traffic problem due to major highways being closed in northern China.

The other video above concentrates on the severe bottleneck at a toll booth caused by only 20 lanes being operational over the typical 50.

China’s National Tourism Administration has reportedly estimated that nearly half of the country’s 1.36 billion population were travelling during the October 1^st to 7^th holiday period. Best of luck to them all.