Chun Yun refers to the period of 40 days of travel period when the world’s largest annual migration takes place in China, as millions of Chinese people travel back to their homes to celebrate the Lunar New Year or Spring Festival.
This is the time for epic family reunions in China. The holiday season marks the beginning of a new year in the traditional lunisolar calendar of China and is now also observed in other countries like Vietnam, where people celebrate it by the name “Tet”.
The period of “chun yun” started on Saturday (January 7) as the nation prepared itself for a massive increase in the number of travellers and an increase in cases of Covid-19 infections.
This year the public holiday of the Lunar New Year, which officially starts on January 21, will be the first to be held without any restrictions on domestic travel since 2020.
In the last month, China has gone through dramatic removal of zero-Covid police after the government faced historic protest against the stringent policy which included restricted movement, frequent testing and mass lockdowns resulting in massive economic loss.
What is the Lunar New Year?
A Gregorian calendar is used by modern China like the rest of the countries in the world. However, the country’s holidays are decided using the traditional lunisolar calendar, which must be in use since the 21st century BC.
In 1912, when the Gregorian calendar was officially adopted by the Republic of China, the Lunar New Year was renamed as Spring Festival which is observed in the present time in China.
According to its name, the lunar new year’s date is decided on the basis of the phase of the moon and differs from year to year.
The lunar calendar is given the name of one of the 12 animals mentioned in the Chinese zodiac every year, which have been borrowed from the ancient folklore of China.
The Chinese zodiac animals, which are the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig, get rotated on a yearly basis.
Lunar New Year, also known as the Chinese New Year in the West, will fall this year on January 22 starting the Year of the Rabbit.
China and Hong Kong mark the period as Spring Festival while countries like Malaysia, South Korea, Tibet, Singapore and others celebrate it as the Lunar New Year.
This is the time for most-awaited family reunions, loud and musical celebrations and plenty of food.
Will the massive travel boost the economy?
Investors have been hoping that the country’s $17 trillion economy will be reinvigorated by the re-opening and the festival time ahead.
However, the sudden exposure of the virus to China’s population of 1.4 billion has triggered a wave of massive infections which have resulted in a lack of medicines in pharmacies, overwhelming hospitals and long queues outside the crematoriums.
In the wake of the “chun yun” period, the Ministry of Transport stated that more than 2 billion passengers are expected to travel in the coming 40 days, further improving the economy.
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What medical facilities will be provided in rural areas?
The estimates have received a mixed reaction on social media with some appreciating the freedom of travelling to their hometowns to celebrate the Lunar New Year, while others saying that they would rather skip travelling from the fear of infecting their family’s elderly relatives with Covid-19.
“I dare not go back to my hometown, for fear of bringing the poison back,” said a user on Twitter-like Weibo.
People have raised concerns over the great migration of Chinese workers to their hometowns resulting in a massive increase in infections in rural areas and smaller towns that are not so well-equipped with ventilators and ICU beds.
The government authorities said that grassroots medical services are being improved and more fever clinics are being in rural areas and a “green channel” is being instituted for high-risk patients, which include elderly people who suffer underlying health conditions so that they can be directly transferred from villages to higher level hospitals.
National Health Commission spokesperson Mi Feng on Saturday said, “China’s rural areas are wide, the population is large, and the per capita medical resources are relatively insufficient. It’s necessary to provide convenient services, accelerate vaccination for the elderly in rural areas and the construction of grassroots lines of defence.”
Has the wave of infections already soared in rural areas?
According to a few analysts, the current wave of Covid-19 infections has already soared in China. Gavekal Dragonomics’ analyst Ernan Cui, citing various surveys which indicated that rural areas have already been massively exposed to Covid-19 infections, said that infections have already reached their peak in most regions, adding that there was “not much difference between urban and rural areas”.
China’s border with Hong Kong will be re-opened on Sunday and the need for travellers to quarantine after coming from abroad will also end.
This will create an opportunity for many Chinese people to plan travel to different countries for the first time after the borders were closed three years ago.
Almost a dozen nations have demanded Covid-19 tests from those travelling from China.
The World Health Organisation recently questioned the official Covid data of the country stating that it is underrepresenting the number of people hospitalised due to the disease as well as the fatalities.
(With inputs from agencies)
