A scene from Shanghai's central railway station Friday as millions of migrant workers depart the city for the upcoming Chinese lunar new year holiday. (Photo: Tom Carter/GT)
They arrive in unkempt clusters at the train station bearing plaid "peasant bags," buckets and other miscellaneous bindles and bundles of belongings. Some sling their stuff onto bamboo shoulder poles, others simply hoist it on their heads. In spite of their unwieldy burdens and the long lines ahead, many are grinning adorably in childlike glee. These are Shanghai's migrant workers, some 10 million strong, who have been apart from their families for the past year helping the city develop vertically, horizontally and economically. After 12 months of toiling, they are finally going home for the holidays, and couldn't be happier.
We tend to collectively forget just how integral migrant laborers are to Shanghai until Chinese lunar new year, when upwards of half of the entire 25 million metropolitan population vacates the city en masse to return to their distant hometowns.
Considered the world's largest annual human migration, chunyun (Spring Festival travel season) is a once-a-year opportunity for laborers to reunite with their families, have a rest, eat well and breathe the fresh countryside air.
The first wave of Shanghai's annual migratory (c)rush began Friday, when the city's central train station saw tens of thousands of sun-kissed workers making their way aboard what the Ministry of Transport predicts will be a record 360 million train trips covering 1 billion kilometers.
Most will go inland on agonizingly long 20-40-hour journeys, though with 65 percent of all routes now being served by high-speed trains, those who can afford the pricey tickets can get home earlier than the others to start celebrating the Year of the Rooster.
