Reflecting on 'Chunyun'—The Spring Festival Travel Rush

This is the first time I’ve worked so far away from home. Back in my school days, since my home was so close, I never really felt the stress of the Spring Festival travel rush—Chunyun. Now, I truly feel like a stranger in a strange land.

As the old Chinese poem goes, “A lonely stranger in a foreign land, I double my longing for my loved ones on every festive day.” Going home for Chinese New Year is surely everyone’s dream. But what’s the hardest part? Can everyone who wants to go home actually make it back safely?

First, take a look at this article from iFeng News. Doesn’t it speak straight to your heart? Buying a train ticket during the holidays is harder than climbing to heaven. Who exactly is making it impossible for us to buy tickets and go home? Is it really just because China has too many people?

I think the railway officials know the answer better than anyone. I remember back in middle school, my politics teacher told us that China is a socialist country where the people are the masters of the nation. If so, why can’t the citizens—the supposed “masters”—even buy a train ticket that they should easily be entitled to? It’s not that I don’t believe in socialism, but one incident after another tells me: this country doesn’t belong to the everyday people; rather, the term “the people” seems to refer to the lowest rung of society.

I still remember a netizen’s comment about the government: “When I was a kid, you lied to me because I was naive, and I bought it. But now that I’ve grown up, you can’t fool me anymore.” We are no longer blinded by sweet talk.

Does the Chunyun mess simply reflect that our country isn’t fully modernized yet? Can this really be waved away by chalking it up to the “primary stage of socialism”? If it were just a case of insufficient railway capacity where everyone couldn’t get a ticket, we would probably just feel a bit disappointed. But why does it make people feel genuinely heartbroken now? I think the government, as the steward of the nation, really needs to think hard about this.

I don’t understand politics (P.S. Once I realized all that stuff was just a scam, I stopped studying it altogether), but there is an ancient Chinese proverb that we must heed: “Water can carry a boat, but it can also capsize it.” I think Premier Wen Jiabao’s famous quote during the Wenchuan earthquake—“I have only one thing to say: it is the people who feed you, so you better figure it out yourself”—wasn’t meant just for the local officials back then.