Returning Home

China is a vast country with a huge population. Uneven economic development has driven many western residents to leave their homes and families to work in the developed eastern regions. Yet China is also a tradition-heavy nation. Every January and February, Chinese people working away from home return to their hometowns to reunite with loved ones and celebrate the most festive and significant Spring Festival of the year. This has given rise to the world’s largest annual human migration. Naturally, trains have become the ideal choice for ordinary people with modest incomes.

Every semester end, the school sees a group of students running a business reselling train tickets. You hand over your student ID, pay a 5-yuan service fee, and they’ll deliver the ticket to you. It’s said that successful teams can earn ten to twenty thousand yuan in about ten days—a pretty good business. My roommate, after failing at romance and racking up debt, saw students’ desperate need to go home and joined this trade. But because the team didn’t manage accounts properly, some people borrowed from Peter to pay Paul and lined their own pockets. In the end, he only made a little over 100 yuan—basically wasted effort.

I have to say 12306.cn was the most successful e-commerce platform of 2012. Some uncles and aunties who never go online started shopping online, lured by the ticket rush. Around the 5th or 6th, my youngest uncle called me saying train tickets from Guangzhou back to Sichuan around the 14th were sold out. He heard you could book online and asked me to buy one for him. That morning, I struggled to log into the poorly designed booking site and searched train by train for a long time before finding a standing ticket. Thinking about how crowded trains get during Spring Festival—forget about using the bathroom, there’s barely room to stand—I couldn’t bear to let him suffer that. I hesitated about just telling him there were no tickets. But that would be cold, especially toward family. In the end, I told him the truth and let him choose. He decided to trade one kind of suffering for another and take the bus back to Sichuan. Still, it hurts.

They say a good man wanders the world with a sword. But what age does “good man” refer to? At half a century old, still having to venture far from home? Maybe “venture” isn’t even the right word—they’ve long passed the age of youthful wandering. I don’t believe that at this midpoint in life, my youngest uncle will have many more blessings coming. Getting rich overnight or even moderately wealthy seems unlikely. Time to return home.