Remember, count your blessings.
Another great post from this lady. An excellent reminder to all of us who moan about driving a few hours or having to fly across country with a baby on our lap to visit out families and friends: we don’t even know how good we have it.
I dread the Chinese New Year season because I can never comprehend the fact that millions of people will have to literally stand in overcrowded trains for journeys lasting up to 72 hours. I’m not joking. Train aisles will be packed with people, standing, squatting. No space to move, at all. These less fortunate people will be suffering while the fortunate ones will get a seat, a hard-sleeper, or even a soft-sleeper. It’s so sad to know that while the privileged get to lie down throughout the journey, the others are just there, an inch away from their feet, on the floor. Standing for 2 hours in a moving, packed train.
Standing for 48, sometimes 72, three days’ journey.
Migrant workers who are old, or look 60 when they are only 35. Some in their late teens, who didn’t have the privilege to continue college due to poverty. Early 20s, 50s. Some of them migrant workers boarding trains with their young children, and luggages bringing special food and gifts for their loved ones back home.
The poor ones. Having nothing with them but a little backpack or a rugged, cheap rucksack. Or those who are migrating from one labor point to another destination, carrying huge rucksacks which contain their whole life in it. I’ve seen them, I’ve traveled with them, but it wasn’t this time of the year. But I’ve seen them.
All taking this annual (some, maybe 5 years since) journey home from the big metropolitans like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing; back to their hometowns across the mainland. I remember gasping when I learned of actual ‘standing’ tickets being sold. They actually have that. And it’s mostly sold during the lunar new year and China’s National Holiday Golden Week.
The migrant workers and peasants never complain. They are the happiest even with a standing ticket. Why? Because, they get to go home for a break. Be with their children, their parents. Some, husbands, wives, living apart in the name of work and money, to support and raise a family.
Let’s also not forget, those who have been saving their wages but still could not manage to buy a ticket. Albeit a standing one.
Wherever you are, I hope you can feel what I feel, and say a little prayer for these hardworking migrant workers in China. Their journey home officially began today, Monday. These are the people who make Dolce & Gabbana shirts, Hasbro toys, Nerf guns, Mothercare clothes, and almost something if not everything you might be using, at home or at work.
They are excited to be home to see their families again, but the journey home is excruciatingly tiring and often uncomfortable one. One might need to step over many others on the floor of the train just to get to the bathroom. Or just to get to the hot water tap so that they could fill their instant cup noodles. Finally, imagine having to share one bathroom with hundreds of others in one cabin. It’s, excruciating.
To them, this holiday is like what Thanksgiving and Christmas is to us. Except that while most of us get to drive and fly, they don’t.
Thank you.
