Spring Festival 2020 Observations
Preface
From the 26th day of the 12th lunar month to the 4th day of the 1st month, I drove from Hangzhou to Shandong and back to spend the holiday with family. Nine days packed with events—looking back years from now, we’ll still remember this unusual Spring Festival.
Main text
Driving 900 km from Hangzhou home took 18 hours—our longest ever. Anhui’s Ninglu Expressway was badly jammed; we diverted to surface roads, then found some highway entrances closed, adding three more hours. Back on the highway at 4 p.m., thankfully smooth afterward.
Removing provincial toll stations and rolling out ETC were 2019 priorities; they help, but the East/North networks still feel little improvement. Private cars have surged—domestic automakers offer affordable options—and old two-lane stretches can’t handle volume. Accidents slash throughput. Toll plazas still bottleneck; more ETC lanes or mixed manual+ETC lanes are needed to maximize flow.
Rural roads are now mostly paved thanks to sustained investment, but safety lags. On a provincial road through a village, six fatal/crippling accidents happened within 1 km in a year. Many villages have no traffic lights or warning signs. Left-behind women, children, and elderly lack driving experience and basic traffic awareness—jaywalking, occupying lanes, parking on main roads are common. Local drivers often flout rules: overtaking on the right, slow cruising, no turn signals.
Under the rural revitalization banner, mountains, rivers, forests, and fields are packaged as tourism. Some places apply “one-size-fits-all” environmental bans: entire lakes forbid freshwater farming to promote water tourism, forcing fishermen ashore to work elsewhere, hollowing out local water culture. Potential second-industry jobs like vermicelli processing were shut for pollution; with modest wastewater investment they could have survived, but township inaction erased the industry. Protecting ecology matters, but not at the cost of eliminating all secondary industry and leaving only farming.
In the countryside, people in their 50s and 60s now use WeChat voice/video, Kuaishou/Douyin for clips, Toutiao for news. Shops and markets accept WeChat/Alipay QR; some already use e-payments.
Yet online rumors and scams spread widely in family and village groups. Many see text as inherently authoritative and never verify truth.
Common rural scams:
Water purifiers: targeting families with kids, selling 3,000–5,000 RMB units worth <500 RMB, with no filter replacement—one-off sales. On one alley, only one of a dozen homes didn’t buy.
Phone scams: exploiting elderly parents’ concern, claiming a child had an accident and needs money; with sparse bank/ATM coverage, brazen scammers even escort victims to complete transfers. A 70-year-old nearby lost 50k RMB.
Cashback + gifts: Day 1 pay 200 RMB get a cup; Day 2 return 200 RMB, pay 500 RMB get a kettle; Day 3 pay 5,000 RMB, get a low-end phone—then they flee.
Fake insurance: issuing fake policies, luring payments of thousands, promising future monthly payouts; money goes to the scammer.
Free medical exams: offering free checkups, gifts, lunch to attract seniors, then hawking fake medicine.
Pyramid schemes: recruiting via WeChat, pitching “five-level three-entry” get-rich-quick schemes; victims lose everything.
Rural areas have become hotbeds for online fraud. Social and payment platforms must curb rumors and scams to reduce harm.
Mobile internet raised awareness of COVID-19 versus SARS. Village committees banned in-person New Year visits via WeChat/broadcasts; for the first time ever, no one visited on New Year’s Day—everyone greeted by phone. By day two, WeChat rumors of rural roadblocks in Henan spread, so villages and communities blocked their own roads and gates, launching a full-scale rural fight against the outbreak. By day three, groups circulated lists of returnees from Wuhan; some places even violently sealed off their homes.
Epilogue
Today’s Chinese countryside is the richest in history, yet faces outmigration, abandoned fields, fraud, accidents, disease, and colder social ties. As we improve infrastructure, it’s even more important to inject vitality, keep warmth, and respect life.
Published at: Jan 29, 2020 · Modified at: Dec 4, 2025
