Chinese travelers happy to see family again despite the epidemic

First modification: 20/01/2023 – 14:32

With Stéphane Lagarde, RFI correspondent in Beijing

There is no duck in the Chinese zodiac, but it is still the top seller at the food stalls in front of Beijing Central Station. A specialty of the capital, the lacquered webbed is brought to friends and relatives who are visited after long train journeys.

A woman is about to embark on the fourteen-hour journey to the Dongbei region of northeast China. “I especially want to see my son and daughter-in-law,” he says. “I missed them so much. Tickets were hard to come by this year, but here we are! I haven’t been back for three years. Okay, I have to go I’m leaving”, he apologizes.

For the first time in three years of the pandemic, sanitary restrictions have been lifted in China, reactivating massive trips for the beginning of the year of “Tùzǐ”, rabbit in Chinese. Some travelers wear those chapkas (caps for the cold) with big ears that remind of the little animal. The wheeled suitcases push their way impatiently pushing the curtains that contain the cold at the entrance.

This thirty-year-old is about to join his parents in Tangshan, in Hebei, east of the capital. He is also looking forward to eating the first moon ravioli of early spring. “Last year I couldn’t come home. Due to the pandemic, I had to celebrate Lunar New Year at a colleague’s house. For me, the spring festival is first and foremost my mother’s kitchen. And then there are the firecrackers The problem is that, like in Beijing, fireworks are not allowed in my house”.

The “traditional spring festival” has also sparked a resurgence in domestic air travel, Reuters reports, with more than 70,000 flights across China, nearly 80% of the level recorded before the start of the Covid era.

Beijing launches campaign against “fake news”

The censors will be very attentive to the news about the feared Covid infection in the field during the holidays. Nothing should spoil the “chunjie”, the new year in China and the first without sanitary restrictions for three years. Few should sympathize with them, but an army of censorship workers will be on deck over the holidays to chase away “dark emotions,” as the Cyberspace Administration has called them. The publication, last Tuesday, January 17, occurs two months after the lifting of the Covid zero policy and the consequent rebound in infections. Since the start of the first wave of the epidemic in the country, Beijing has controlled the narrative around overcrowded hospitals, medicine shortages and, above all, deaths related to viral pneumonia. Several weeks passed before the health authorities finally published a figure: 60,000 deaths from Covid since December 8. Guardians of the Great Information Wall will also monitor the networks during China Central Television’s traditional Lunar New Year gala. The most watched program in the world, which mixes entertainment and propaganda messages, is often the subject of mocking comments from Internet users. The crackdown will target online scams and excessive promotion, as well as “divining and superstitious activities,” according to the statement.