'No matter how difficult getting a ticket is, I have to buy one and return home," Liu Xiaodan, 26, who comes from Changde, Hunan province, and works in a karaoke club in Beijing, said at Beijing West Railway Station on Jan 23. "I came to Beijing when I was 17 and began working in a restaurant," she recalled. "I worked there for more than three years, and my salary helped my parents pay my little brother's tuition after he was admitted to a distinguished university in Shanghai. I can only see my brother once or at most twice a year, especially since he graduated from the university and landed a job in Shanghai. So Spring Festival is a big occasion for me to be with my parents and my brother," Liu said, adding she would spare no efforts to get a train ticket back home. "Last year, I bought two tickets, for me and my boyfriend. I know it is wrong to go to scalpers, but people like me never have any other choice," she sighed. "Before Spring Festival in 2009, I stood in line for nearly five hours on three consecutive days to get a ticket."
China's transport system is being put to the test, as the world's largest annual human migration comes to a peak with the Spring Festival holiday wrapping up.
Editor's note: Hu Tianxiong, 33, who works at in a financial company in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, shares his story of carpooling with China Daily reporter Cao Yin.
South Africa's Paralympic gold medalist Oscar Pistorius has been charged with the Valentine's Day murder of his model girlfriend, police confirmed on Thursday ahead of his expected court appearance.
Karl Gerth has spent a quarter of a century learning about China, but is wise enough to realize how little he still knows. When Gerth first visited China in 1986 he was a college student with barely enough money for a pizza and a six-pack of beer. But in the eyes of his Chinese classmates, because he came from the United States he was rich.
The small village of Hongmiao in the Huairou district on the northern outskirts of Beijing is known as the "Lantern Village", as it is famous for making traditional Chinese lanterns. Farmers in the village, many of them women, were hard at work making red lanterns in the run-up to Spring Festival.
As a tradition, Chinese people greet each other with propitious words - to which the zodiac animals are usually related - during Chinese lunar New Year. Some years are easy, such as the Year of the Tiger, which represents power and strength. Sheng long huo hu, or "vital dragon and vigorous tiger" in Chinese, is often used to describe people who are energetic and full of life. The Year of the Ox is connected with being productive and successful, as the animal represents hard work, or simply a bull market.
To describe the significance of China's changing hairstyles is no simple task. In China, possibly more than in any other culture, hair has long had strong political and social meaning. Until as recently as the 1970s, hairstyles were not an easily changeable outlet for personal expression, but a symbol of everything from status and ethnicity, to political ideals.
What is on your must-buy-luxury shopping list? Handbags, jewelry, watches? These days, extra space - a luxury not found in most apartments - through self storage is the new chic.
Sun Yat-sen, Laozi and Buddha are venerated by most Chinese but worshiped by Vietnamese Cao Daists - along with Jesus, Mohammad, Pericles, Joan of Arc, Louis Pasteur, Vladimir Lenin, William Shakespeare and Victor Hugo. That's not to mention practitioners' ancestors. Cao Dai's fusion of faiths is manifested most prominently in its Great Temple, which is frequented by not only devout followers but also by inquisitive visitors. This building's structure, like that of the religion it houses, is also an assortment of symbolism from various creeds.
There are ways to deal with the cold. Boasting splendid scenery and one of the world's most magnificent grasslands, Hulunbuir attracts more than 10 million tourists each summer.
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