Life and Travel in China

In China, after all, there is some holiday spirit. Most Chinese people do not understand the meaning of this holiday and are also not Christians. Maybe it's more about the commercial and material aspect, because there are Christmas trees everywhere (of which many are produced in the Middle Kingdom), there are many Christmas decorations in shops, department stores and restaurants, and the staff wear Santa Claus hats. Now there are even offers of special Christmas dishes in restaurants, and some hotels even organize something like Christmas stays and Christmas Eve in a package. This is because more and more Europeans and Americans are coming to larger Chinese cities.

My words that one day China will have enough cars have already come true. Although I didn't expect it to happen so quickly. In Beijing, traffic, traffic jams and cars are already a drama. A topic that appears every day on TV, in the press and on the Internet. In Beijing, the population is about 22 million people, now there are about 5 million cars. In Hong Kong, there are approximately one million business and private cars for every nine million people. They have a better organized metro, buses, ferries... for Chinese people from Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen or Shanghai, having a car is a matter of honor! Of course, the industry has accelerated, advertising, government policy, an increasingly wealthy society, in 2010 in Beijing alone, 760,000 vehicles were added. The market is already saturated and the streets are clogged. They now jokingly call Beijing "ShouDu" - which means "capital of traffic jams". In other cities, such as Shanghai or Guangzhou, the situation is not any better. In Shenzhen, they are saved by modern ring roads and wide main roads, even with 4-5 lanes in one direction. Despite everything, it looks tragic and only now the Chinese notice the problem of too many cars.

Chinese New Year has its charms, but there is also one significant drawback! The Chinese are already waiting in kilometer-long (literally kilometer-long!) lines for train tickets! Many people want to return to their hometowns for the holidays, they will leave cities such as Shanghai, Ningbo, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou... to return to their towns and villages. For them, all these queues, jostling, fighting for seats on trains, buses and even planes are normal. The average Pole would be devastated by this and lock himself in his apartment at random. I treat their New Year's trips as a great sacrifice, for them it is simply an opportunity to visit their family. The problem is that several hundred million people get this opportunity at the same time! In Beijing, for example, the migration will be 36 million people (arriving and leaving in total this holiday season). It's as if all of Poland left the country and Poles living abroad would return to our place (within 2-3 weeks). It's hard to even imagine, but that's how it works in the Middle Kingdom.

My wife (Chinese) has always loved manga drawings, she was exposed to Japanese culture and knows the Japanese language. Recently, she has devoted more time to her hobby and has taken her drawings seriously. We decided to include them in our FOTOCHINY.com gallery. Please visit the new category, comments and ratings will be welcomed. These are only her first drawings - inspired by manga pictures from a book about learning to draw and from the Internet. I hope you enjoy her manga! Although they are not closely related to China, such art is very common in the Middle Kingdom.

I observe that more and more people come to Shenzhen to spend the New Year with their families. Previously, it was the other way around: young people usually saved some money for travel and returned to their hometowns - of course, many still do this. Nowadays, young people in Shenzhen are doing better and better and they invite their parents or even grandparents. They want to show them their new apartment in Shenzhen, drive them around the city and organize a gala dinner - New Year's Eve and a gala dinner on New Year's Day. There will be dishes such as chicken - symbolizing new opportunities, pork shank - symbolizing family unity, green vegetables - good relationships in the family, and fish - symbolizing prosperity and abundance. Of course, there are different dishes and dishes in different parts of China, but the symbolism is similar. I have already spent seven New Year holidays in the Middle Kingdom and I know that the most important are two elements: family and good food!