BEIJING - China's railways carried 31.3 million passengers during the week-long Spring Festival holiday from Jan 22 to 28, the Ministry of Railways (MOR) said Sunday.

The figure was 2.85 percent less than the number of passengers carried by railways during last year's holiday period.

During the holiday, a total of 31.97 million train tickets were sold. Among them, 20.3 percent of all tickets were sold through the official ticket-selling website 12306.cn or by telephone, according to the MOR.

In this year's Spring Festival travel rush, passengers could buy train tickets online or by telephone for the first time, rather than have to stand in long queues or rely on ticket scalpers to get tickets.

In the week-long holiday, 73.13 million tonnes of cargo were delivered by railways across China, up 2 percent from a year earlier, according to data from the MOR.