My observation about China during Spring Festival, from 3 aspects

Hi, everyone,

I just came back from the 8-day Spring Festival vacation. I can not wait to tell you what I saw and felt. I chose 3 things that impressed me most.

The first is the number of people traveling around. Chinese people are used to using this vacation to reunite with families and friends or enjoy the pleasure of travel. So “Chun Yun” (春运，Spring Festival transportation) is scary. This year is not exceptional. From January 28th to February 4th, the cross-regional passenger flow of the whole country exceeds 2.3 billion.

The cross-regional passenger flow refers to the scale of cross-regional movement of people for business, tourism, etc. between countries, cities, and between urban and rural areas. It is the volume completed by railways, roads, waterways, and civil aviation, excluding urban passenger traffic.

Specifically, the passenger volume by railway was 96.26 million, by road 2.1 billion, by waterway 9.4 million, and by air 18.2 million.

So many people traveled during 8 days, and the society is still orderly, that is a magical thing. Compared to last year, online railway ticket booking services are less complained, and prices of flight tickets dropped 16.6% due to the convenience of high-speed railway.

A new phenomenon is that more people drove EVs (Electric Vehicle) to travel across provinces because the proportion of highway service areas in China with charging facilities has increased from 85% at the end of 2023 to 97%. Drivers of EVs do not need to worry about charging.

The second is the total box office of new films released during the Spring Festival season exceeded 10 billion yuan, breaking historical records. All six films released during the Spring Festival season are domestically produced. Hollywood was forgotten by Chinese audiences.

The top one is “Ne Zha: The Devil Child Goes to Sea” (《哪吒之魔童闹海》), which has broken several records in the history of Chinese cinema and got half of the total box office. Its success is not limited to the 5 billion yuan box office, it is seen as a rebellious work that transcends the art of Hollywood movies.

Some international political metaphors have also been found in it. For example, the pass of the Chan Sect, which is proud of "orthodox noble lineage," bears a striking resemblance to U.S. green cards. The "Tianyuan Cauldron," a pill - refining furnace that exploits the three realms of humans, demons, and spirits to maintain its super-dominant position, has symbols similar to the U.S. dollar on it. The marmot, which only cares about having enough to eat in its own territory, is labeled as "dangerous" and is unjustly arrested and thrown into the pill - refining furnace...

(Left: you know; Right: pass of Chan Sect in the movie)

(Left: patterns on the pill - refining furnace in the film; Right: you know)

The high box office, and the art success of Chinese-produced films reflected that the spiritual world of the Chinese people has become richer, and they have more pursuits for cultural life.

The third is the hottest topic during the festival, which is DeepSeek. Everybody is talking about it. The app is used to do various things, from writing acrostic poems for New Year greetings to providing career guidance … It is powerful, efficient, and totally free. It is like a New Year gift to everybody.

Chinese people are more and more convinced that it demonstrates the technological capability of China, which is under U.S. ban on chips. The national confidence is greatly boosted.

Jiaozi (means dumpling), the director of Ne Zha, and Liang Wenfeng, the founder and CEO of DeepSeek, are the biggest stars and legendary heroes in this Spring Festival. They are humble young professionals who look like ordinary person. With very ordinary looks and dresses, the words of the two released by the media shine with wisdom.

（Left: Ne Zha, the cartoon figure; Right: Jiaozi, the director）

(Left: an official participated the seminar held by Chinese Primere Li Qiang on Jan. 20th; Right: Liang Wenfeng, founder and CEO of DeepSeek)

They cause waves of reflection. Regarding Jiaozi, the reflection focuses on whether parents can tolerate their child staying at home and spending their limited pension for 3 years to make a movie that is not sure to be successful, just like Jiaozi’s mother did. Regarding Liang, the reflection focuses on why state-owned research institutes, public or private big companies can not develop LLMs that can compete with OpenAI’s products.

We can see through these two examples that China is in a great transformation. The thing that catches most attention of the whole society is how to make better innovations, no matter in the field of art or in the field of tech. China’s goal of development is to transform from production-elements driven to innovation driven. I think it is on this road.

Regardless of the United States' policy towards China, and regardless of the development of other countries, China is steadily moving forward at its own pace. This is what I witnessed during this Spring Festival.

Welcome you come to China to see it with your own eyes. (Please let me know if you come and maybe we can arrange to meet.)