China, entering the Spring Festival - the world's largest migration - with an estimated nearly 3 billion trips spanning about 40 days of Lunar New Year holidays, 99.9% of which are expatriates.
Such peak migrations have been a phenomenon since the 1980s, when rural workers headed to cities in search of work amid China’s rapid urbanization. These workers only had the time and savings to return home once a year for the New Year.
Tired people with the baggage of a year of hardships, they together overcome the last journey of the year and then start a new year with a similar journey in reverse.
Tet always brings excitement to children, then over time, excitement turns into anxiety, anxiety for a prosperous Tet. Then from anxiety, there are people who are afraid of Tet, there are people who dread Tet, and there are also people who are indifferent to Tet.
Vietnam, in a large Facebook group, a few days ago there were two photos, one of the whole family including father, mother, older sister and younger brother sitting on the floor eating instant noodles, the other of the same people, also sitting on the floor eating instant noodles, but after more than ten years, the two sisters have grown up and the father's hair has turned gray. In the thousands of comments below, there were hundreds of comments with the content "I wish my family had a photo like that".
My memories of Tet are the days when my parents went to the market at four in the morning, returned home at eleven at night, and had bowls of duck vermicelli soup with lots of broth and noodles bought at the alley entrance, to warm up the cold dinner tray from the afternoon.
My memory of Tet is that on the morning of the first day, my parents dressed my siblings and I in the best clothes and then the whole family went to my grandmother's house, where there was a large brick yard in front of the five-room house, where my grandmother sat on a wooden table and chairs in the middle room, in front of the altar filled with incense smoke, where my uncles, brothers and sisters gathered to have a meal together at the beginning of the year.
My memory of Tet is of an older brother who always came to wish me a happy new year at the first meal of the year with the extended family, not at the beginning, nor at the end, always in the middle of the meal, every year the same.
My memory of Tet is a family photo - one of two that I still have with my father, the other was taken when I was one year old. My father's smiling face in the photo has been enlarged, framed in glass and placed respectfully on the altar for seventeen years now.
Reunion, for many, is just a journey, but for some, it is just a memory.
