SHANGHAI: As you read this on Sunday morning, in India, almost every single person on the other side of the border, in China, will be preparing for the biggest lunch of their year. It’s the Chinese New Year’s Day today and our billion-and-a-half neighbours are celebrating the Year of the Water Snake. The Year of the Water Dragon is on its way out. As I type this on Friday evening, many Chinese HR managers are probably still in office as this is crunch time for them. Their inboxes flooded with last minute applications and cover letters disguised as customised greetings. Their desks stacked with red greeting cards filled with handwritten endearments from the more earnest candidates. This is the time of annual churn for corporate China. Fresh beginnings often mean fresh jobs. As these HR managers scramble to wrap up, on Friday evening, all the Chinese high-tech railway stations and T3-esque airports are packed with people rushing to their hometowns. The usually port-heavy and factory-freckled Eastern coast drains itself of millions of Chinese workers, many of whom have left a child in their home province. This homecoming event is often cited as the largest periodic migration of humanity ever. While standing in Hongqiao Station, in Shanghai, the energy at these transport hubs is palpable. These people are filled with week-long anticipation, like the final week before school closes. They yearn to spend the following holiday week with their family. I spent last Chinese New Year’s week with one of these families in semi-rural China. It was a town called Gaoyou, outside the ancient capital of China, Nanjing. Breakfast consisted of roast chicken, roast pork, chicken soup, spinach salad, pork soup, rice, baijiu, iced wine and cigarettes. This was just the first meal of the day, at 9 am. Lunch at noon, and dinner at 6 pm, were even more elaborate. Thank goodness I eat everything. Well, that’s what I said up until last Chinese New Year lunch time. On that eventful day I picked up food with my chopsticks from the revolving table and just as I put one chunk of meat in my mouth, my Chinese American friend leaned over and said in a hurried whisper “Dog”. I kept chewing. It took a while for this idea to sink in, but when it did the next day, I wound up eating just palak and chawal for the next two days straight.
As published in The Economic Times, 10th February 2013. By Jacob Skrybe Cherian
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