Ah, Chinese New Year.
Time for family,
dumplings!
And crazy...
insane...
travel.
Welcome back to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
For most Americans,
the words “spring festival” and “insane crowds”
mean one thing—
SPRING BREAK, BABY!
But in China, those words mean much bigger crowds,
And sliiiightly less fun.
Because every year,
China is home to the world’s largest
seasonal human migration.
It’s the annual travel frenzy around Chinese New Year.
These days in mainland China,
they call it the Spring Festival.
Not because Chinese people in February
are weirdly optimistic about spring,
But because, like many traditional things in China,
the Communist Party changed the name to make it
less about those old feudal superstitions,
and more about the kind of messages they can control.
Anyway, Chinese New Year this year is February 5.
And 2019 is the year of the pig.
Or if this is your zodiac year,
you can call it the year of the boar,
which sounds way cooler.
But no matter what the year,
the Chinese New Year holiday is accompanied
by a massive travel rush that lasts about 40 days.
It’s called Chunyun,
which means Spring Festival travel season.
This year, between January 21 and March 1,
Chinese people will make nearly 3 billion trips—
by planes...
trains...
and automobiles.
Wow.
Compared to that,
a few days with John Candy doesn’t sound so bad.
The main reason for the ginormous travel crowds
is China’s migrant workers.
About 270 million people have migrated
from the countryside to the cities to find work—
in factories, construction, etc.
Understandably, a lot of them want to
go back to their hometowns to visit family.
And pretty much everyone in China gets the same dates off.
So this puts a big strain on China’s infrastructure.
Tickets for buses, planes and trains can be really
hard
to get.
About a decade ago,
the Chinese government launched Operation Sky Sword—
Clearly not a new Zelda game.
It is a huge campaign
to fight fake train ticket scalping
in Guangzhou, one of China’s busiest transit hubs.
The situation has improved a bit since then.
Especially since the introduction of high speed trains.
Chinese authorities even launched
10 new railways at the end of 2018
to deal with this year's travel rush.
They’ve also started new ploys
to make the insanity more bearable,
like service robots that serve of water
to travelers at train stations and,
you know, probably scan your face to keep tabs on you,
but hey the water’s free!
Or a train station symphony orchestra
to serenade travelers with on-message music and songs;
Or train station dance performances that definitely don’t feel forced.
But even with improvements,
it’s still miserably crowded.
But that’s the price Chinese people
have to pay to get home for the holidays.
Whether they’re in Chongqing,
Nanjing,
Xian,
Shanghai,
or Beijing.
So as China rings in the Year of the Pig,
spare a warm thought for
the hundreds of millions of people
trying to make it home for the holidays,
and for the old
the young
and the very young
as they try and survive the 2019 travel madness.
And the watchful gaze of big brother.
So how would you make the Chinese New Year travel madness
a little easier to bear?
Leave your comments below.
And before we go,
it’s time to answer a question from a fan
who supports China Uncensored
through the crowdfunding website Patreon.
Reventon Arch asks:
“Why the beard Chris?”
I think this speaks for itself.
Thanks for your question, Reventon.
And thank you to all my fans
who contribute a dollar or more per episode.
We rely mainly on your support
to keep China Uncensored going.
Go to Patreon.com/ChinaUncensored to learn more.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell.
See you next time.