Chunyun is about tradition, not travel woes

• Source: Global Times
• [03:59 February 02 2010]
• Comments

By Wu Meng

For a foreigner who wants to learn more about China, chunyun (passenger transportation during the Spring Festival) is a good place to start.

It represents ancient family-oriented philosophy as well as social changes to date. Population, migrant workers, transportation, city, country, infrastructure and traditional attitude toward family – conditions and elements that are changing or unchanged come together in this short period.

It is only 11 days to this year's biggest festival. People are talking about where it is easier to get train tickets and which websites offer the cheapest flights to go home.

This is a difficult time to find a housemaid, and local restaurants suspend door delivery. All this for one reason: People are going home for the Spring Festival, which falls on February 14 this year.

This Spring Festival will see hundreds of millions traveling all over China, mostly for the yearly family get-together. This includes millions of migrant workers, college students and people working in cities away from home. This massive movement of people is rooted in the soul of the traditional family culture.

Ever since I first left home for university, the four-week-long winter vacation became my most anticipated period toward the end of a semester.

There were times when I couldn't get a hard-seat ticket and had to stand in the aisle with a bag weighing 5 kilograms on my back; and, there were times when I had to share a one-meter-long seat with three others. The journey was not comfortable, but cer-tainly it was happy with so much to look forward to.

News reports have always associated chunyun with the overload on public transportation caused by millions of migrant workers going home and back to the big cities. But, from the cultural viewpoint, what chunyun really fulfills is making a dream, that has remained in our history for thousands of years, come true: Family reunion.

With urbanization and rapid development in China, some people are suggesting we should cancel the Spring Festival and make the holiday flexible for another time of the year. “It is costly, painful and unnecessary” is what some critics say.

But, just the tiresome chore of queuing up for a bare seat in the train, anxiously waiting for the ticket makes it more special than any other holiday in the year.

And the Spring Festival is when we realize that money doesn't mean everything in a world full of desires.

It is the time when the warmth of the old “family comes first” philosophy is perfectly reflected in the cold season.