The journey home begins for millions
The executive
Dong Yanyun, vice-president of marketing at a French Internet company, plans to take a flight home on Spring Festival Eve. She works in Beijing, but her parents live in Ma'anshan in East China's Anhui province.
"I didn't go home for two consecutive years and I'm afraid my parents will scold me to death if I don't return this year," she said, adding that she will give her parents 50,000 yuan ($8,000) in a red envelope to make them happy, because she does not see them often.
Dong traveled to Hong Kong during Spring Festival last year and the Philippines in 2011, rather than sticking to the holiday tradition of a family reunion. Because she wasn't going home, Dong's parents visited her grandparents in Anqing, Anhui province.
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"I think there are many other ways to celebrate Spring Festival. It's really unnecessary for such a huge proportion of the population to take the trouble of going home during this one holiday," she said.
"First of all, it's a waste of resources for the entire nation to migrate at the same time and it puts a lot of pressure on the transport network. Second, for many people, Spring Festival means visiting lots of relatives who will ask the same old questions such as 'when are you getting married' and whether you have any plans for a baby. People of my age are really fed up with this sort of conversation," said the 31-year-old executive.
The last time she went home, she was working in Shanghai. The trip was more convenient because Shanghai is much closer to Ma'anshan than Beijing. She spent more than two hours on a high-speed train from Shanghai to Nanjing, Jiangsu province and then had a 40-minute cab ride home.
She prefers going home on other holidays or during her paid leave. However, she only stays for a couple of days, mainly because her hometown - like many small and medium-sized Chinese cities - has little in the way of entertainment other than karaoke, mahjong and spa centers.
"My lifestyle and daily routines are usually disrupted when I return home for the Spring Festival week," she said. "I have nothing to do but eat like crazy and my parents treat me like a little girl. But when I'm here in Beijing, my schedule is always full. I can go to bars and nightclubs with my friends in the evening, and go skiing or climb mountains on the weekend."
She had considered taking her parents to Southeast Asia during this year's holiday, but found the cost of traveling was at least two or three times higher than usual, so the family has decided to make the trip at another time when prices are more reasonable.
The car owner
While most people are fretting about getting a ticket to head home for the Spring Festival, Sun Xuemei, a 32-year-old landscape designer at a real estate company in Beijing, is extremely calm.
Although the annoying experience of being trapped in a seemingly endless queue of vehicles on the expressway during the National Day holiday in October remains clearly etched in her mind, she has still decided to drive back home.
"It will be the sixth year that we have driven back to Jilin city (in Northeast China's Jilin province). I can give a long list of pros for driving back, such as not having to worry about hard-to-get train tickets or expensive air tickets. More important, the departure time is very flexible and it will be convenient to have the car with us during the stay in my hometown," she said.
"Both my husband and I drive, so we can alternate shifts at the wheel every one or two hours during the eight-hour journey. Safety is our top concern. We only drove back once with just two of us. And most of the time friends or relatives who are also qualified drivers travel with us. On the one hand, it makes our trip more fun and on the other, it lowers the cost. We often take turns to tell jokes and play games to kill time. We also stop at every service station for a few minutes to rest," she said.
"Last year, the round trip cost us about 2,000 yuan, which included toll fees and petrol. There were four in the car, so it worked out at 500 yuan per person for the round trip, which is a cheaper than one ticket for a hard-sleeper train.
"Northern China often has heavy snow during Spring Festival, but we are very lucky that we have never become stuck on our way back to Jilin. We hope that good luck will continue this year," said Sun.
Generally, the fear of becoming trapped in heavy snow means that few people choose to drive back to the northeast. So even during the Spring Festival period, the expressway is still relatively empty. But this year, they will be toll-free during the holiday period so it's hard to judge whether people will take advantage of that and drive home, she said.
"To avoid the traffic, we often leave early in the morning. When we arrive at my parents' house, we're usually just in time for dinner. My parents never know what time we will arrive until we are knocking at the door and so if I tell them the day, they will worry until we arrive safe and sound. I hope my parents can come to Beijing to join us for Spring Festival next year. I've worked in Beijing for eight years, but still I don't know what New Year's Eve looks like here," she said.
