Hello again, and welcome back to Lulu's happy hour.
You probably noticed the change in background music. Today we are playing Chinese folk music 中國民樂。Next week is going to be Chinese New Year and the majority of Chinese are doing one thing at the moment——going home. Either you're already in your hometown or you're getting ready to go back to your hometown. Or, as we are speaking, you are actually on the way home. So the topic of today's episode is "Going home". And we're going to look at the fascinating journey most Chinese take once in a year around this time.
First of all, let's look at the idea of "Chunjie". A lot of people would say "Spring Festival" which is a direct translation from "Chun" and "Jie". However, if you're speaking to an English speaker or people who don't really know China that well, many of them do not really know "Spring Festival". Instead, what they know is "Chinese New Year", or sometimes called "Lunar New Year". This is a holiday for family reunion for you to get together with your family members. Many of us will go back to our native provinces, our hometown. You probably all know the world "hometown", but sometimes we also use the word "native" that means you were born there and you grew up there. Your native province is the province you were born in and grew up in. For instance, he is a native of Beijing, and you can just change Beijing into any other provinces or cities that you were born in.
One thing to note is in Chinese we say “老鄉(xiāng)”, meaning people from the same hometown or even from the same province. But in English, there is simply no such thing as “老鄉(xiāng)”. This whole idea of “老鄉(xiāng)” is very much related to Chinese culture. Personally I think it's a quite warm idea to think that you are automatically closer to people who were born in the same city or in the same province as you were. Moving on to the actual journey home, this is a once in a year holiday travel rush during the Spring Festival. Of this year, Chinese New Year travel season or travel rush, is set to last for 40 days till March 12th. This holiday travel rush has been called "The largest annual human migration". This is the largest in the world. Now let's look at the word "migration". Migration simply means moving from one place to another. The word "migrate" is the verb. Animals migrate for better weather and climate. Human beings also migrate for a better life. The word related to migrate, we also have immigrate and emigrate. Immigrate and emigrate means to migrate between countries. Immigrate is you moving into a country, to become a part of that country or to live there. Emigrate means to move out of a country. So, for example, you can say "to immigrate to Australia", or you can change it into any other country. That's why when we travel to other countries, you will go through "immigration". And if you move to another country permanently then you become immigrants.

In the Chinese context, we talked about migrate. There is a word "migrant worker". It refers to people who move from their hometown, usually in rural areas to the cities to work. Because they have to leave their hometown and to find a job in the city. When we talk about the huge cities in China, we have words such as “北漂” to refer to people who want to have a career in these huge cities. One of the translation I found for “北漂” is "Beijing drifter". "Drifter" in English has a slight negative meaning. It means people who move around without a stable home. But in a way it probably matches the word in Chinese.
Coming back to the trip, everyone knows the scale is huge and I have checked the statistics for this year. Apparently, real authority is expecting 390 million passengers. And this is more than the entire population of the United States and six times the population of the United Kingdom. So that's your reference. And during the holiday travel rush, 3 billion trips will be made by train, bus and air across the nation. Most people will travel from urban centers to smaller towns or villages. Here I would like to mention the idea of "rural" and "countryside". Sometimes students ask me which word should they use, rural or countryside? The difference between rural and countryside is, rural usually contains a large farming population. For instance, in the UK, you usually would talk about countryside because there are very few farmers left. But in China, we still have a large farming population so most part would be rural areas.
Since people are leaving the big cities, cities like Beijing during the New Year are simply deserted. Especially the part I live in Beijing because there are lots of universities. Students they all go home for the holiday. So there are very few people left. It's practically deserted. By contrast, all the transport hubs are really crowded and packed. A very interesting English expression is "sardine packed". Very vivid so you crammed in like a can of sardine. For those of you who are on the road, especially if you are at the train station, it's probably sardine packed by now. And no matter which station or airport you are at, you usually would see the word departure meaning to leave and arrival meaning to arrive. Even though people still complain about how difficult it is to buy a train ticket, it has already got a lot easier because now we have ticket machine at the station. We have online ticketing platform and we can use e-ticket. So most of us no longer have to go through scalpers. Scalpers are people who will buy all the tickets and resell them. The Chinese “春運” has been called by foreign media "a marvel of logistics" 物流方面的奇跡。It is also a sign of urbanization and increased mobility.
In the end, Lulu wants to share with you a few very simple idioms that would fit this episode. They are all about travelling. The first one is "to be on board". Literally it means on board a plane, a boat or a train. But it also means to agree with something. For example you can say, "Is everyone on board with the new plan?". This means does everyone agree with this new plan? The next one is "on the fast track". Literally track is the railroad track. (fast track 快軌) But it also means getting promoted really really quickly. For instance you can say, "He is on the fast track to success" The other two idioms have something to do with the word "road". First of all, you can have one for the road. Imagine you are having a meal with your friend, and you need to say goodbye and you need to be on the way. Then you say, "Let's have one for the road." Have another drink before you part. The last idiom is to "hit the road". This simply means to start your journey 啟程了動身了。We need to hit the road now. So on that note, let's have one for the road and let's hit the road. And I wish everyone a safe journey home. I will see you next time. Bye.

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