This year, an estimated record 2.9 billion passenger trips will be made as the rush to get home before the New Year begins on Monday. A crush of humanity descends on the nation's train stations, long-haul bus depots and airports; highway traffic is snarled for tens of kilometres as the mass exodus of migrant workers leave big capital cities eerily empty.

Online ticketing, a crackdown on scalpers, and an ever-expanding high-speed rail network has made getting home easier, but delays can cascade dramatically. Delays brought on by bad weather saw more than 100,000 travellers stranded outside Guangzhou's main railway station this week, and another 30,000 at Shanghai's Hongqiao.

For many blue-collar and peasant workers doing grinding factory or construction jobs in the cities, it is the only time they get off each year to return home to see loved ones. With China's economic growth slowing, and pay conditions deteriorating in those industries, many may decide not to venture back out to the cities again after the new year.

But increasingly, those with the financial means are eschewing the annual travel rush altogether, choosing to spend the week-long holiday abroad.

Instead of her usual trip home to Zhengzhou, in central Henan province, Fan Shasha is taking her parents to Thailand and Singapore. It will be her parents' first trip overseas.

"We'll be in Singapore on New Year's Eve, it should be a really good atmosphere there," the 27-year-old product manager at a digital media company said. "There are lots of ethnic Chinese people in Singapore too, we wanted to be somewhere where we could speak the language so that my Mum and Dad would not have such a hard time adjusting."

The trend is a departure from tradition for the New Year holiday, where most families sit down together for a reunion dinner – often with the Spring Festival gala variety show on television. Red packets are exchanged, and firecrackers and fireworks are let off for days on end.

"My parents are completely fine with the break in tradition," Ms Fan said. "If it was just me, I wouldn't have planned such a long itinerary. But my parents feel they want to see more while they're in good health, take in a few different cities, so we'll be away for about 15 days."

It reflects not just the increasing spending power of middle-class Chinese and their aspirations to travel, but also a generational change in family dynamics.

The one-child policy means China has many small nuclear family units of three. Those who have entered the workforce for a few years are typically only children whose parents are reaching retirement age. Ms Fan said her mother has been itching to travel overseas ever since she retired last year.

"The New Year atmosphere is becoming more and more diluted each year in the cities," she said. "When I was little we'd go to my grandmother's home in Nanyang, a lot of relatives lived nearby and everyone would get together. Now we've moved her to live with us in the city, there's greater distance between us and other relatives, it doesn't have the same vibe."

The surge in overseas travel over the New Year break has been a boon for Australian tourism too, with a 57 per cent spike in visitors during last year's Chinese New Year period, according to Tourism Australia.

A similar increase this year would see arrivals in February alone reach 250,000 – a quarter of the total number of Chinese tourists for the past 12 months. Chinese visitors surpassed 1 million for the first time last year, and the country represents Australia's most valuable and fastest-growing inbound tourism market.

China's neighbours like Japan, Thailand and South Korea are also major beneficiaries, to the point the countries' well-developed tourist industry is straining to cope with peak demand. Many neighbouring countries are also eliminating or simplifying visa requirements for Chinese tourists as competition for the notoriously big spenders heats up.

Ms Fan caught the travel bug while studying at university in Birmingham, using her base in the UK to travel widely through Europe, and has continued to travel regularly since returning to work in China.

"Actually I invested in shares last year," she says. "I would have gone to the United States last year, but because of the stockmarket, I went to Thailand and Vietnam instead."