The first China-Europe freight train transporting imported products for the upcoming Spring Festival arrived in Xi'an City, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, on Thursday.

 The Xi'an international port station welcomed the train loaded with 1,740 tonnes of rapeseed oil imported from China's neighboring country of Kazakhstan.

 This batch of rapeseed oil will be put into the grain and oil market in Xi'an and surrounding cities to enrich customers’choice for festive purchase ahead of the Spring Festival, which falls on Feb. 10 this year.

 "This is the 1,740 tons of rapeseed oil that it brought back, and it will transport 3,000 tons of wheat later on," said Li Pei, station head of Xi'an international port station.

 In order to facilitate the public to buy imported products, the China Railway Xi'an Group collaborated with the Xi'an Aiju Cereals and Oils Industry Group to hold a Lunar New Year's shopping festival in an industrial park next to the port station, where customers could buy more than 500 kinds of imported goods such as cereals, oil, snacks, vegetables and meat from Europe, Central Asia and other countries.

In 2023, the annual number of trips by China-Europe freight trains in Xi'an exceeded 5,300 for the first time, and the cumulative number of trains exceeded 20,000, making it the largest station for China-Europe freight trains.

 In January this year, the station handled 325 trains, up 14 percent year on year. This surge in activity will help expedite the construction of the China-Europe freight train Xi'an assembly center, with the goal of ensuring seamless domestic and international circulations and contributing to Belt and Road cooperation.