This is the season lots of expats in China love.  We start off with Canadian Thanksgiving in October, follow up with American Thanksgiving in November, move on to Christmas and Hanukkah in December, and then New Year’s.  But no post-holiday letdown for western expats in China because Chinese New Year, also called Spring Festival, is next up. 

The Year of the Tiger begins February 14 and Chinese staff are already beginning to finalize their travel plans and generally get into a pre-holiday mindset. Frankly, though, it’s something of a challenge to get into a mellow pre-holiday mood when contemplating the rigors of getting home during the holiday travel period along with tens of millions of fellow citizens.  The numbers and logistics are quite numbing.

For foreigners, though, this is a great time to just hibernate, and avoid travel for the next month or so while enjoying the lights, the food, and the sense of holiday that pervades the street scenes.  By the time the New Year celebration culminates 14 days later in Lantern Festival, most folks are pretty well partied out and in a mood to bear down for another few weeks until spring actually does arrive.

So the lights are still up from the January 1 New Year celebrations, the local plaza has started hosting the occasional evening musical concert, and we’re soon going to be in the throes of all those last minute preparations endemic to most major holidays.

New foreign assignees often go through a period of angst as familiar holidays aren’t celebrated while unfamiliar holidays are. But once one gets into the hang of it, having an extended holiday season by celebrating the holidays of both home and host country can be pretty great.

Bring on those red packets!