Chinese New Year 2021 Plans — Myriad Misadventures

Looking Ahead

So maybe summer 2020 wasn’t what I had hoped it would be (if you haven’t read that post post check it out here). But all things considered it was a lot better for me than for most people. But where do I stand for travel moving forward.

The current semester ends in a couple months and Chinese New Year vacation is usually one of my main travel times. This year is obviously different but will it be as bad as this past summer or will I have some more options? Honestly I don’t expect it to be as bad but my options will still probably be pretty limited.

As I understand it China is still very closed. I have heard that they’ve started issuing visas again but I think it’s still much more difficult to get here than it was pre-COVID. Furthermore when countries have flare ups of COVID China will regularly bar them from entering the country again. As I’m writing this I’m pretty sure the UK has been put back on the list. And I’m surprised the USA hasn’t been considering it’s record breaking week.

Because of this international travel will probably still be off the table. Even if some countries are open and allowing tourists in I’d run the risk of getting stuck outside of China if I leave. I know lots of people. That got stuck outside at the beginning of the year and haven’t been able to get back in yet. And since Max, Felix, and my job are all here I can’t really afford to get locked out.

Domestic travel should still be doable though, although it’s not without its pitfalls. First it’s been much more difficult for foreigners to find hotels since all of this started. Some hotels still accept foreigners, and Airbnb doesn’t seem to have changed much, but there are definitely a lot of hotels that did accept foreigners before that currently aren’t.

Second, much of China is cold during Chinese New Year. I definitely prefer when it’s warm but there’s probably some things that I could only see when it’s cold. Like that ice festival they have in Harbin. But if we went somewhere really cold (as opposed to only kind of cold, like Osaka in 2020) I’d have to buy some cold weather clothes. To use for that one trip. Then have to find some we to put them for who knows how long. I’m not super keen on that.

Third and possibly most problematic is that we have much less time for domestic travel during the Chinese New Year vacation than we do during summer vacation. The actual Chinese New Year is supposedly the largest human migration on earth with it seems the entire country heading home. Train stations and airports are absolute madhouses and best avoided if you can. I do not want to travel during the holiday. That means that we have to make sure we do all our traveling at the beginning of the vacation before the actual holiday starts. We usually try to do this anyway during our usual international trip but it’s a must do if we do any domestic travel.

So this Chinese New Year vacation will probably be a lot like this past summer. A little bit of domestic travel but no grand trip. In fact it will actually probably be a lot more like a normal Chinese New Year than last summer was compared to previous summers. We often go on multiple trips during the summer, so being limited to one local trip was very different. But during Chinese New Year we usually only go on one trip. So although we might not be able to go on a big trip like in the past we won’t really be losing out on trips. It could also be a good chance to visit some places here in China that I’ve been meaning to go to but haven’t. At least places that aren’t too far north. Maybe Shanghai or Chengdu. I’ve thought about Hainan island too but Max says it’s not far enough south that it will still be warm so maybe we’ll save that for later.

We haven’t planned anything yet, and it will definitely be a little different than normal, but so far this Chinese New Year vacation isn’t looking too bad.

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