NewChinaHand: Chinese New Year Travel Tips & a very cool migration map.
Travelling over the Chinese New Year can be a crowded, expensive and tiring pursuit, so here’s a few tips to make your experience more enjoyable and relaxing.
Number one: don’t bother. You’ll end up poorer, unrested and bitter towards life, and may even start to think that Chinese New Year isn’t a real holiday at all (just like Valentine’s Day).
Number two: even if you ignore useful advice number one, don’t, under any circumstances, travel in China during the Lunar New Year. You might be enticed by promises of colourful parades, delicious dishes with special meanings and gigantic, earth-shattering government fireworks displays, but the reality is that you’ll be part of the ‘largest annual mammalian migration on earth’, which is as dehumanising and draining as it sounds.
Don’t believe me? Check out this ‘heat map’ produced by BaiDu (China’s Google) that tracks where people are heading over the break, updating at four- to eight-hour intervals:
http://qianxi.baidu.com/mobile.html
TechinAsia found the most popular destination (and departure point) was the capital, Beijing, and that the route between Beijing and inland power-house Chengdu was the most travelled.
(Slightly disturbing that BaiDu collects all this information, but like I said: they’re the Chinese Google. Maybe they got it from Angry Birds.)
So stay at home, enjoy time with your family and savour the Chinese New Year from afar. But don’t cook, clean, cut or wash your hair, say bad words, use the number four or eat meat (except for chicken and prawns, naturally) or you will be doomed for the whole year of the horse!
Now try and do all of those things during a mammalian mass migration, and you’ll get my point.
Wishing everybody Gong Xi Fa Cai (Kung Hei Fat Choi) and a very Xin Nian Kuai Le (Sam Nin Fai Lok)!
The Guest Room will be taking a week off for Chinese New Year. Don’t miss us too much!
We’ll be back next Thursday with a new format. We hope you’ll like it!!
Selected Sources:
http://www.techinasia.com/baidu-data-track-worlds-largest-human-movement-chinese-year-begins/
http://qianxi.baidu.com/mobile.html
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