What we can learn from how China celebrates its New Year

For three weeks every year, life in China comes to a complete standstill on a scale that’s difficult for the rest of the world to imagine.

Imagine a month where all the factories stop working, economic output plummets, cars vanish from usually crowded streets, and some of the world’s most populated cities such as Beijing and Shanghai resemble ghost towns.

For three weeks every year around the Lunar New Year, which this year fell on January 28 to herald the "Year of the Rooster", the more than 300 million Chinese who work in cities away from their hometowns return home. It’s a holiday that China takes very seriously.

The Lunar New Year was briefly sidelined as a major holiday under Mao Zedong, who encouraged workers to show their commitment to the cause by working through it, but the holiday came back in the more open the 1980s, since when it has been known as the Spring Festival (in part to distinguish it from the January 1 new year).

Beijing has been unrecognisable this past week. Almost all offices and businesses are shut, the streets are empty and the skies are blue. The seven-day national holiday is also a major boost for domestic tourism — another reason why the government sees value in encouraging it — when families take off for a few days to travel.

Just between Friday and Monday, China’s domestic tourism revenue reached $46 billion, the National Tourism Administration said. More than six million Chinese will also travel abroad.

China’s tourism market during the new year has become so lucrative that many Southeast Asian and European countries have launched major campaigns to lure Chinese tourists. The United Kingdom is among the most active in promoting tourism. Its efforts have paid off. In London alone, this past week Chinese tourists spent around 10 million pounds (or Rs 85 crore), reports said.

One market that has missed out is India, continuing to receive low footfalls from China. Despite the deep interest especially in Buddhist sites, the lack of interpreters and the absence of a sustained tourism campaign aimed at China have led to low numbers, with Chinese travelling instead in large numbers to other destinations in the neighbourhood such as Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Here India has certainly missed a trick.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)