Chinese New Year

My journey from Xinjiang to southern China began with (surprise, surprise) another long train. This section of the journey was in three parts (Turpan to Lanzhou, Lanzhou to Chengdu, Chengdu to Kunming) and took about 48 hours altogether.

A large chunk of my holiday was spent on trains, but this wasn’t so bad: Chinese trains are much cheaper than flights, and they give you a better feel for the country, since you can see one type of landscape slowly blend into another. Taking trains is also a great way to practise speaking Chinese, and I feel every train I’ve taken has a different story to tell, from the different kinds of people I’ve met and talked with on board.

However, these three train journeys particularly stood out because of one factor: Chinese New Year, only two days away. Chinese New Year (or Spring Festival) is like Christmas and New Year combined. It’s the most important event in the Chinese calendar, and everyone must go home to celebrate with their family. This means more than 400 million people are travelling on China’s railways in the days leading up to the festival, making it the largest human migration in the world.

The trains were packed. When I booked my tickets online, some trains even sold out within five minutes. Still, it was interesting to experience the “Spring Festival travel rush” first-hand, seeing everyone’s determination to get home. For some Chinese workers, this is the only chance they get to see their families all year.

Kunming (4-5 February)

I eventually arrived in Kunming, a city in southwest China which, due to its location, has warm, sunny weather all year round. It was a relief to finally take off my winter clothes! This part of China is also home to several ethnic minorities. Before coming to China, I imagined “Chinese” as just one ethnicity. I was surprised to learn that China is actually home to over 56 ethnic groups, each substantially different from one another.

Curious to learn more, my first stop in Kunming was the Yunnan Ethnic Minority Village: a large park containing several small villages, each inhabited by a different ethnic group, where you can walk around observing their different cultures and lifestyles. I visited several villages including those of the Bai, Miao, Yi, Dai, Hani, Hui, Wa, Tibetan, Mongol, Manchu, Nu, and Achang ethnic groups, each having its own unique flavour. My favourite village was that of the Naxi ethnic group, as they are the last remaining people group on Earth to use a pictographic writing system (like Egyptian hieroglyphs). The artwork and New Year decorations in the Naxi village had pictographs instead of Chinese characters – a very cool sight for any language nerd like me!

Hani ethnic minority village

Naxi pictographs

That evening was the eve of Chinese New Year, and I was fortunate enough to have a dinner invitation. A German lady who was part of the tour group in Tibet told me she lived in Kunming and kindly invited me for dinner when I came over. I imagined something casual, however when I arrived it turned out to be in a large, fancy hotel. She was working as a volunteer chef in the kitchen with her friends and had put on a huge buffet for a host of Chinese guests. When I sat down and talked with her friends, it turns out they were just as confused as I was: “we don’t really know what all this is for – they just wanted some foreigners to come and cook some dishes and promised free food and drink… so here we are.”

Despite not having a clue about what the occasion was, I had a splendid evening: there was plenty to eat, of both Asian and Western cuisine, and it was cool to catch up with a traveller from a previous part of my journey in a completely different place. She told me about her trip to the Himalayas with the rest of the Tibet tour group, and I told her about my time in Xinjiang.

Chinese New Year Dinner

After we had dinner, coffee, and a long dinner table discussion on philosophy and politics, we all went outside at midnight to welcome in the new year. Sadly, there were no fireworks (they’ve been banned across China due to air pollution issues), however firecrackers were the next best thing. The hotel staff placed a long ribbon of crackers on the patio and warned us to step back. After lighting what looked like a small incense altar and bowing in front of it, they set fire to the ribbon, then turned and ran. It was like the detonation of a hundred hand grenades. The courtyard erupted in light, smoke and ear-splitting sound – a few minutes later some janitors came down and swept away all the shrapnel. That night the sound of firecrackers could be heard across the city, and they were still going off the following day – while walking down the street I would sometimes hear a sudden “Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!”.

The next day I took a long walk around Kunming, enjoying the sunshine and lush green lakes. All the shops were closed because of the New Year, but there were still many Chinese people around enjoying their time off work: practising Tai Chi, cruising on the lake or feeding bread to the seagulls (a surprisingly popular tourist activity). In the evening I took a high-speed train to Nanning in Guangxi Province, and was amazed to see how few passengers there were on board. Every train I’d taken in the past few days had been overcrowded, but now that everyone had gone home, the train station was deserted. I had an entire carriage of the bullet train to myself – I almost felt like some Chinese billionaire, having a private escort at 300km/h through the mountains and rice fields of Guangxi.

Arriving at my hotel in Nanning marked the last night of my travel in China before going further abroad. The past few weeks had opened my mind to the vastness of the country beyond the familiar confines of Tianjin and given me new insights into human life and thinking. I’d definitely like to explore China more this year, and later in life. The next morning I packed my bags, said goodbye to China and took a bus across the border…