Be all you can be!!: March 2013

Chinese New Year or sometimes it is called "Chinese Lu Nar New year" is extremely important for Chinese. It is the time for family gathering; everyone travels back to their hometown to gather with the love ones. In China, due to the highly competitive environment and lack of employment opportunities in the rural areas, most people had gone out to the big cities such as "Beijing", "Shanghai", and "Guangzhou" to seek employments for living and support family. They usually work for the whole year and go back to the hometown in the end of the year. You all know how crowded it is in China especially in the major cities, and imagine how crowded and tense it is when most of the people are desperate of traveling home for New Year. During the traveling period roughly started from Feb. 1 to 7, it is the most crowded period. The tickets for the transportation are short, which causes the dramatically increase in the transportation fee. However, if you are high- income class, it is probably not hurting so much. I am talking about the lower income class, these people are usually travel in the over crowded train and of course there is not enough seats for everyone, which means if you needed to travel long distance to home, you have to stand for 48 hours or longer.

I had to travel to Guangzhou from HK at that period, it was a bit crowded, but not very bad. However, when I arrive at "GuangZhou" east station, I was shocked. I saw there are crowded with people, kids, elders, and all kinds of people from the lower income class. These are people who work in the restaurants, factories, and people selling fruits, and barbecue snacks on the street under hot sun. They had to wait for the long distance train to travel home, and they had to wait there for days, which means they have to eat and sleep in the train station, and bear with the long waiting.

This is the phenomenon I do not see in any other place. Not in Hawaii, not in HK. I was thinking that I am lucky compare to those people. Should we be more appreciated to what we have? Should we be thankful to where we are at the moment? Should we stop complaining about life and start living a life? What do you think?

This is in Luo Hu station, the border between China and HK, that is how much people waiting to cross the border.