Opinion

Epic traffic jams in many Chinese cities and in the country's capital city, Beijing, in particular, has been in the press for years. No matter if it is because of bad weather, road construction, school year commencement or weekend rush, even a trivial matter can virtually bring the municipal traffic to a halt, leaving tens of thousands of drivers stranded on the street. Journalists are already callous to endless complaints against these year-round scenarios and ironically have started to report on empty roads instead of routinised congestion. Together with uniform shutdown of government houses and private businesses, the bizarreness of city-wide smooth traffic marks the week-long Chinese New Year celebration – the height of Chunyun, when hundreds of millions of urban dwellers migrate back to their hometown for family reunions. Dubbed as the largest scale of human migration in the world, Chunyun, literally translated as spring commute, refers to the massive exodus of Chinese people returning home from work or study elsewhere during the spring festival. It forms an annual stress test for the country's transportation system. The two biggest national "golden-week" holidays in China, namely the Lunar New Year and national day celebrations that each last for one week, are often compared to each other. Both of them give people enough time to travel to a more distant place, but it is Chunyun that evokes people's emotional bonds to their family and poses a near mandatory duty for all Chinese people to go home, regardless of how much they earn. Of course, the well-off class can afford to go anywhere on either occasion, but for the giant army of lowly-paid migrant workers who have been consciously saving every penny that they pocketed, a sightseeing trip during the national day celebration seems too luxurious. They prefer to work overtime in …

I seldom comment on Hong Kong affairs, given my limited knowledge of the city where I have been residing for three years. Otherwise I would be "playing with an axe at the front door of carpenter Lu Ban's house", a Chinese idiom meaning showing off one's meagre skills before an expert, without realising one's limitations. Discerning readers might have well guessed my mainland background through the following hints, including the pinyin romanisation of my Chinese name and the title of my column, Chenglish.