National Post (National Edition)
CHINESE HOLIDAY SPARKS EXODUS
LUNAR NEW YEAR
SHANGHAI • Shi Ying won’t be making the traditional pilgrimage back to Shanghai to celebrate the Lunar New Year holiday with her extended family. Instead, they’re all going to Japan for shopping and sightseeing.
That new custom lets her family bypass the mobs, clogged roads and subways, lousy customer services — and boredom — that can mark holidays at home. During the past few celebrations, Shi and her relatives left China for Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the U.S.
“The last thing my parents want for the Chinese New Year is a cheerless holiday with the three of us staying home in Shanghai,” said Shi, 30, who works for a non-governmental organization in Beijing. “Going overseas during the Spring Festival costs about the same as going to some domestic tourist spots.”
The essence of China’s seven-day holiday, also called Spring Festival, is morphing as rising incomes and an expanding network of international flights prompt more people to go abroad. Outbound travel for the holiday break is expected to top a record six million passengers, with airlines hauling nearfull loads to Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia.
The Spring Festival shuts down the world’s secondbiggest economy for a week as hundreds of millions of factory and office workers leave their adopted homes in Shenzhen or Beijing to reconnect with their ancestral ones, often on the opposite side of the country. Thousands more expatriates return.
This year’s celebration, from Jan. 27 through Feb. 2, will see the biggest mass migration of people on Earth. More than 414 million Chinese will ride in planes and trains — as if everyone in the European Union was on the move.
About 58.3 million people are expected to fly, representing a 10 per cent increase from last year, according to estimates by the Civil Aviation Administration of China. Chinese airlines generate about 20 per cent of their revenue during this period, Saxon said.
Instead of going back to her hometown in the northeast China forest, Xi Chunhui is going to Macau, Singapore and Hong Kong for 11 days with a friend.
“The Spring Festival celebration is the same old thing every year at home,” said Xi, 27, an editor for an Internet portal in Beijing. “I don’t think me not being there with them will kill the mood.”
Going sightseeing abroad also is a consequence of the government’s generationslong policy restricting most families to one child, said Catherine Lim, a Singaporebased analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. A moreaffluent younger generation now wants to see the world, she said.
“When your entire family size shrinks, there really isn’t much to do” at home, Lim said. “They want to spend more money — particularly the younger generation — on experiencing new destinations rather than buying the biggest Hermes bag.”