We are so lucky that our friend Emily invited us to her family home to celebrate Spring Festival. Better known as Chinese New Year, Spring Festival is actually a celebration of the lunar new year and is celebrated for 15 days in many Asian countries. The holiday is basically like having all of China throw a family reunion - at the same time. In China, the Spring Festival travel rush, known as chunyun, is probably the worlds biggest seasonal human migration. Shannon and I made the 1000km trip north from Beijing to our friend's village, near Changchun, by train. Though we paid for seats, many of the other passengers stood or sat on the floor for the crowded seven hour trip. The countryside we saw was somewhat unremarkable, made up mostly expansive corn fields dotted with
... read more