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Anyone who has lived or traveled in China during Spring Festival knows to avoid public transportation if they can. Spring Festival is a joyous time when the Chinese get to go home and visit their families. This is sometimes the one time each year they get to reconnect with them. For some of our Chinese friends, this meant 30 hour train rides on hard seats to the countryside, carrying huge bags of gifts for their families with them. One of our friends even carried a huge radiator back to her mother's house! Some expats might find being packed like a sardine to be an interesting experience (well, that already happens to New Yorkers every day during rush hour on the 4,5,6 IRT trains), but others might enjoy the peacefulness of a major city that has largely emptied out.

Following content is from http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-01/12/content_7386086.htm:

The largest movement of people in the world started in earnest over the weekend with big groups returning home for Spring Festival, which falls on Jan 26.

People crowd a passage to a railway platform at Guangzhou railway station in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong province January 10, 2009. A total of 188 million people will be travelling by train in the country for family reunion during this year's Spring Festival travel peak, which will last 40 days until mid-February and strain the railway system. [Xinhua]

This Chinese Lunar New Year about 2.32 billion trips will be made in 40 days, or 3.5 percent more than in 2008, and put the public transport system to test till Feb 19, the National Development and Reform Commission said.

A record 188 million people are likely to travel by trains, the main choice for long-distance journeys, the Ministry of Railways said on Saturday. That would be 8 percent more than last year.

About 24.2 million passengers, or 12 percent more than last year, will fly to their destinations, with the rest of the travelers making about 2 billion trips on the road.

The Ministry of Railways expects the number of pre-festival travelers to peak between Jan 20 and 24, while the Jan 30-Feb 4 and Feb 10-14 periods would see the highest number of trips after the holiday.

The early rush of people returning home this year has surprised the ministry.

The railways carried 4.5 million passengers on Saturday and an estimated 4.7 million yesterday, said Zhang Zhenli, railway official in charge of transport during Spring Festival.

Railway bureaus in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou added 319 temporary express trains yesterday to deal with the travel rush.

"Seats have replaced sleepers in the temporary trains so that they can carry more passengers," Wang Yongping, ministry spokesman, said at a press conference on Saturday. That has increased the number of seats in a coach by 40 to 50.

But a lot of people are still finding it difficult to book a train ticket. And 67.8 percent people feel scalpers are mainly to blame for that, Xinhuanet.com cited a survey as having said on Jan 7.

The ministry has promised to deal strictly with scalpers and fire ticket-selling clerks who help them.

An example of what beefed-up security can do was seen in Guangzhou, where police busted a gang of fake ticket makers on Jan 7 and seized about 60,000 fake train tickets from them, the Guangzhou Daily reported yesterday.

When I was growing up in a Chinese American household, we would often create nicknames on the fly for all the neighbors based on their attributes, like "Water Can Man" or "Bad Boy" and even used extensions like "Bad Boy's Brother" or "Roofing Man's Wife." Sometimes we got so used to using the nicknames that we would forget their real names. The Chinese also like to come up with names for mountains and hills. Ever been to Yangshuo/Guilin? Every hill and mountain is called something poetic, like "royal horse prancing in heaven" or "a thousand peach tree blossoms." As it turns out, they nickname buildings too. I had no idea!

Content from: http://china.blogs.time.com/2008/11/13/naming-the-cctv-tower-or-why-big-underpants-is-better-than-hemorrhoids/

The new China Central Television tower (Getty Images)

Walking through my neighborhood last night I passed an old couple walking a large, shaggy chow. Another neighbor gave it a look, paused and asked, “What do you call it?”

“We call it, ‘big bear,'” one of the owners said.

“Oh, I was going to say, it looks just like a bear,” the neighbor replied.

Names, especially nicknames, pet names and the like, can be incredibly literal things in China. If you are fat, there's a good chance people will call you “fatty.” If you have a big beard, people will call you “big beard.”

The same goes for iconic structures. The Great Wall (or literally, the “long wall”) doesn't leave a lot of doubt as to what it is. Many of the famous new buildings that have gone up in Beijing recently have been given their own tags by the people. The National Center for the Performing Arts is known as the “Duck Egg.” The National Stadium is known as the “Bird's Nest.” They're both humble yet fitting names for these grand edifices.

The people at China Central Television are apparently not so happy with the public's nickname for their gleaming new headquarters. The building, which was designed by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, consists of two slanting towers that are joined by sections on the ground and two horizontal sections at the top to form a continuous loop. It is an architectural and engineering marvel. To the people of Beijing it is simply, “Big Underpants.”

That name is not yet as common as “Bird's Nest” or “Duck Egg,” and CCTV seems intent on thwarting the rise of the admittedly inelegant Big Underpants. The state-run broadcaster has asked for alternatives from staff members, according to a report in the Chinese press, but so far they've had little luck coming up with a popular substitute.

Centuries ago Confucius spoke about the “rectification of names,” which, somewhat ironically, is a highfalutin way of saying you need to call things what they are. Perhaps CCTV should heed the wisdom of the sage, and the people of Beijing, and go with Big Underpants. It could be worse. One possible substitute floated in the Chinese press was the “Wisdom Window.” Nice try, but as some online commenters have noted, in Chinese it's a homonym for “hemorrhoids.”