Chinese New Year Is World’s Biggest Human Migration | Hacker News Reader

Chinese New Year Is World’s Biggest Human Migration

bloomberg.com

61 pointspseudolus31 comments

I highly recommend the documentary Last Train Home. It follows a Chinese family - the parents leave their children in their rural village to go off in search of work. They make the annual trip back to see them for Chinese New Year.

The film captures the awesome scale of the migration and its cultural importance, as well as the social impact of China's urbanization. It's really devastating.

I have seen this documentary a few years ago and still think about it on a monthly basis or whenever someone refers about Chinese workers. Really impactful.

There is definitely a lot of misunderstanding between Chinese and American peoples. They are a lot more similar than most understand. And when people say something could "only" be done in one country or the other, they are usually grossly mistaken.

The governments are different though. And China's problem of keeping everyone employed and having bright enough futures that they won't revolt is far greater and more urgent than the US's, it doesn't mean the US doesn't have the problem. A lot of the reason for wage stagnation in the US is because profits were diverted and invested in China to help growth there. The profits from those ventures ended up staying in China where it fueled a boom, but even then it was only a fraction of what is needed to get everyone employed in jobs with future growth potential. If it slows enougb to start failing, it has the potential, with so many people, to be pretty nasty.

I think China is a pretty fascinating place, with definite problems, but still pretty fascinating.

In other news, protests in Hong Kong over Chinese tourists.

"We don’t want your money: Chinese shoppers told to spend cash elsewhere by frustrated Hongkongers who just want some peace and quiet" https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/hong-kong-economy/articl...

Also, Bloomberg is really the worst with clickbait titles.

Haters everywhere. Hong Kong is not really the best place for peace and quiet. Like... really

peace and quiet... HK? Well, haters take their own shares. However HK cannot make money from peace and quiet to make it sustainable.

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Hong_Kong#GDP[45]), Tourism is 5% of the GDP and I believe a big chunk of that is contributed by people from mainland.

I highly doubt if it's only 5%. A mainlander goes to HK, buys Rolex and new iPhone. Wears the Rolex and switches to the new iPhone. Goes back to mainland without declaring anything. How do these numbers end up in official statistics for tourism? Or it could be the other way round: HK resident buys Rolex and iPhone, sells in mainland thus making money.

Unless the Rolex and iPhone are made in Hong Kong, only the wholesale and retail margin would show up in GDP.

We are one of the financial capitals of Asia and a significant amount of goods departing China to the West go via our city.

I’m sure these things can be tracked by analyzing the currency exchange patterns between HK and the mainland

Sometimes I blame this on Government. They are by far the worst Government in any developed cities. They want more tourist and yet they don't build any more infrastructure. Frustration mounted and some blame are then being pointed to Chinese Tourist.

Prior to working where I am now, I worked at a fabless semiconductor manufacturer, with a development office in Shenzhen. It was actually kindof nice: As long as everything was coordinated properly back in November, China would continue working during US Christmastime, and we would keep working during China New Year.

I still remember there was an article about the largest human made DDoS attack on the China Railway Ticket System. When you literally have few hundred million people all trying to access the system at midnight. The ticket system was at one point built on Ruby Rails, but I think it quickly moved to something else before moving to Go.

The online booking site had the hardest captchas I've ever seen. One time I was having difficulty and asked a couple of colleagues to help. Even they (well-educated native Chinese) got it wrong one time.

This article has some examples: https://www.techinasia.com/chinas-train-ticket-site-image-ca...

Other than the captcha, the site works well, although it's not pretty.

This Wendover Productions video "Why China Is so Good at Building Railways" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JDoll8OEFE also explains a lot about how things have changed recently to make this migration even more possible in China. They've built so much high speed rail in the last decade that they now have more than the rest of the world, combined. Hong Kong to Beijing is under 9 hours, while comparable distances in other parts of the world are over 40 hours.

> The government expects 2.99 billion journeys to take place over the holiday, an increase of 0.6 percent from the previous year [...]

So assuming most are taking a trip somewhere and a trip back, that's about 1.5 billion people involved in this phenomenon, somehow or another- roughly 1 out of every 5 humans on the planet!

The 1.5 bilion people number seems fishy to me, because that's slightly larger than the total population of China.

EDIT: The official and current UN number is 1.42B. China's last official count was 1.35B in January 2013.

If you're a couple heading home, you may need to travel three times to be with two sets of family.

You might also need to travel multiple times to have a traditional meal at the family home, and then go somewhere else for an actual vacation getaway.

Enough edge cases and the numbers could work out. Also the metric is trips, not people; if you live in some provincial village out in the country you may need to take multiple modes of transportation.

I agree with the 2.99 billion trips, assuming some definitions for trip. My parent comment mentioned 1.5b people, which I do not agree with.

Which can't be right, as China 'only' has a population of 1.4 billion, of which a significant portion will probably not travel since most of their family is local.

This has to somehow include multiple trips per person. Maybe train to airpot + flight + train to destination + the same for return.

The metric is journeys, not people. There are lots of small villages not directly connected to the rail network or an airport.

China is a very diverse country and has a good amount of rural residents. To reach these towns, a hub-and-spokes model is followed, which added more trips per person.

Wow this must be tough on the climate

Actually, I would think everyone travelling during one period of the year is better for the climate than the alternative which is people going back to their hometowns uniformly throughout the year. Going back together would mean that trains/buses/etc are all at full capacity so it's way more efficient CO2/energy wise per person mile travelled.

Majority of the people are taking trains and HSR which are quite energy efficient.

3 billion trips in 15 days. Hats off to whoever make this transportation infrastructure possible.

That's amazing. I always assumed that the Hajj to Mecca was the largest.

With some metrics, I bet it still is. My understanding is (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that everyone is all going to a specific set of locations (instead of the more-broad "where family is"). What I'm not sure about is if everyone goes to those places in the same order, on the same days.

Checkout Kumbh Mela, India (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumbh_Mela) going on right now. It happens every 6/12 years. In 2013, 120 million pilgrims attended it over period of 30-40 days.

See the reactions to this post and those from PH Internet usage. I just cannot ignore the stark stereotype contrast...

> See the reactions to this post and those from PH Internet usage. I just cannot ignore the stark stereotype contrast...

Could you explain? I don't get what's stark, nor the stereotypes about reactions.

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