I’m not in Beijing to experience the Chinese New Year celebrations, but if I were, this is what I would be seeing outside my living room window:
That clip was filmed on New Year’s Eve, 2010 — from my living room window!
Part of me is glad to be missing that and part if me wishes I were there.
Story of my life, I guess…
Here are some interesting articles about the New Year celebrations in China.
From The Guardian: Chinese new year: mass holiday exodus underway – video
The world’s largest annual human migration reaches its peak on Friday, as millions in China travel home for the lunar new year. With around 200 million people on the move, pressure on the transport network is reaching a critical point. One traveller has devised a head-support sleeping aid to make the long journey home more pleasant.
From NPR: Chinese New Year: Dumplings, Rice Cakes And Long Life
About 3,000 years ago, give or take a couple of decades, the Chinese people began celebrating the beginning of their calendar year with a joyful festival they called Lunar New Year. They cleaned their homes, welcomed relatives, bought or made new clothes and set off firecrackers. And there was feasting and special offerings made to the Kitchen God for about two weeks.
From the BBC: Behind the scenes as Chinese TV prepares for New Year Gala
More than 200 million people are on the move in China to be with their families for the Lunar New Year this weekend. Many will be watching the carefully co-ordinated Lunar New Year Gala, where hundreds of acts will be expected to perform. The BBC’s John Sudworth has gained exclusive access to plans by Chinese state television for this weekend’s New Year gala programme.
Again, from the BBC: Boyfriends for hire to beat China’s wedding pressure
In the basement of an office tower in central Beijing, a cloud of gloom hovers over the canteen at lunch time. Groups of young women huddled over large bowls of noodles look depressed when asked about the February’s impending Chinese New Year holiday. “I’m pretty old – I’m almost 30 – but I’m still single,” explains Ding Na, a woman hailing from China’s northeast. “I’m under lots of pressure. My sisters and my relatives all ask me why I’m not married. When they call me, I’m scared to pick up the phone.” […] Luckily for some, China’s most popular online marketplace, Taobao, offers a band-aid solution: the rental of fake boyfriends. For as little as $50 (£32) a day, dozens of classified adverts promise to provide a male companion for the holidays, pretending to be a single woman’s plus-one.
And one more from The Guardian: New Year Celebrations Around the World — in Pictures
From Beijing to Bangkok, Stockholm to London, communities around the world get ready to celebrate the Chinese New Year and welcome in the year of the snake.
Finally, I recommend the movie Last Train Home.
Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos as an astonishing 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year’s holiday. This mass exodus is the largest human migration on the planet – an epic spectacle that reveals a country tragically caught between its rural past and industrial future. Working over several years in classic verité style Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan (with the producers of the hit documentary Up the Yangtze) travels with one couple who have embarked on this annual trek for almost two decades. Like so many of China s rural poor, Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin left behind their two infant children for grueling factory jobs. Their daughter Qin – now a restless teenager – both bitterly resents their absence and longs for her own freedom away from school, much to the utter devastation of her parents. Emotionally powerful and starkly beautiful, the multi-award-winning Last Train Home’s intimate observation of one fractured family sheds unprecedented light on the human cost of China’s economic ‘miracle’.
HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!
Leave a Reply