Happy New Dragon Year!

Chinese authorities estimate that 3,2 billion trips, including intercity flights, trains, boats, and local buses to remote villages, will take place during the six weeks around the national holiday starting on Monday. An estimated 250 million people are going home by train, which already made the online booking system for railway tickets slow and even crash when it got 1,66 million hits once.

Mainland transport, energy and security authorities have been put on high alert by Beijing to make the return of migrants run smoothly. Likely, the authorities also hope that there will be no huge snow storms as in the Chinese New Year back in 2008 when millions of migrants got stuck in southern China unable to return home.

To many Chinese, the Chinese New Year holiday is the only time during the year when they can return home to their home villages and hometowns. This is especially important for the rural migrants who have left the rural, poorer hinterlands for the coastal, more prosperous regions to get better paid jobs in factories, construction sites and urban service sector where they work as maids or custodians.

Chinese New Year begins on Monday with the Year of the Water Dragon.

Many rural peasant migrants have left their children behind in the rural areas as it is hard for rural children to enroll in urban schools, which requires an urban registration. Instead, the rural children stay with their grandparents in the countryside and hope to join their parents when they are old enough to work in the cities. Sometimes, the parents only return home once every second year, making the trip back home even more important.

The coming two weeks, China is basically closed down as the Chinese families congregate making dumplings, jiaozi, sticky rice cakes, nian gao (which sounds like “a year higher” in Chinese) or spring rolls, depending on where in China you live. Jiaozi are especially popular in northern China, and there is also a saying that the more jiaozi you eat during the New Year celebration, the more money you will make the coming year.

Chinese New Year is also celebrated with massive use of fire crackers, which are said to scare away the old year, this time the old rabbit. To a Westerner like myself, it feels like being in a war zone as the fire crackers never seem to end, and accidents are common despite SMS-warnings from the government to be careful when setting them off.

Chinese employers usually pay out a 13th month of salary to its employees and there are big New Year’s parties with food and karaoke. Gifts are also important and the Chinese are estimated to spend 17 percent of their annual spending on gifts for the New Year celebrations. Popular gifts include expensive liquor, nicely boxed in chocolate, food specialties and of course the hong bao, the red envelope with money that people give to children.

Despite the joy of celebrating the Chinese New Year, not everybody is happy. According to some surveys, many Chinese worry about the high expenses for gifts, heavy traffic and the troubles getting back home safely, not to mention the social pressure singles feel as they return home and their parents want them to get married. But on the Chinese Internet, there are now ads for renting a fake boyfriend or girlfriend over the holiday to keep your family happy, at least this year.