”Do not travel during Spring Festival”

Ask anybody and they’ll tell you right away: ”It’s just insane” or ”Avoid it at all costs” are also heard quite often.

Chinese New Year has the dubious prestige of triggering the officially largest human migration of all times –whatever officially means–.

This, obviously, puts some pressure on the system. It’s not only about the logistics and the natural limits of the territory, or the available means of transport, or the capacity for feeding and providing shelter to such a large number of sentient beings; it’s really about something else, something much more precious and intangible. It’s mainly about mental space.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, I strongly recommend you to watch “Last train home”, a moving documentary from 2010 by Lixin Fan that will shed some light and paint a very vivid picture of what I’m referring to.–

Oh, and by the way, do not travel during Spring Festival.