The weeks preceding Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, are notoriously miserable for train travelers in China. The holiday is China’s main traditional festival, and it is generally considered vital to return to one’s home region at this time to celebrate with family. In recent years, travel by air and car have greatly expanded. But [...]
The Chinese Lunar New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, is drawing closer, and once again the accompanying annual travel rush began weeks ahead of time. Hoping to celebrate China’s most important holiday with their loved ones, a large number of migrant workers, students and visitors left cities around the country for their hometowns. [...]
Millions of Chinese migrant workers fail to get paid for their work each year, in spite of ongoing government efforts to increase official monitoring of labor relations in the country. For some, however, attracting media attention and sympathy from China’s online community has proven to be an effective method of pressuring errant employers into coughing [...]
This article also appears in The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. In freewheeling and fast-growing China, providing an innovative service might be enough to get rich. In the case of China’s tightly regulated train ticket market, however, it is enough to get arrested. The story begins with the approach of China’s most important [...]
Ah the holidays. Chinese New Year is, of course, a wondrous occasion — a season of pure pyrotechnical and gastronomical joy. There is nothing quite like vegging out with loved ones surrounded by loads of food after enduring an almost ritualistically arduous journey home. In fact, Chinese New Year is better than Christmas and Thanksgiving, combined, because there [...]
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