Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The year 2026 was my first Spring Festival in China. I knew, more or less, what to expect. Across most parts of China, fireworks and firecrackers, red lanterns and fortune characters on every door and window in sight, red envelopes and well-wishes of good fortune from family and friends alike. 

Living in a residential area in Beijing, I witnessed the gradual exodus of young and middle-aged suitcase-wielding first-generation urbanites in the days leading up to the Chinese New Year. The long migratory routes, of course, are now increasingly a thing of the past, as more than three quarters of Spring Festival travelers travel at over 200 kilometers per hour toward their hometowns. Nonetheless, time does not stand still. Among our young acquaintances and  those of our generation on Chinese social media, now many discuss bringing their parents to them as what might have once been a grueling, multi-day long trip is now a relatively comfortable half-a-day door-to-door journey greatly aided by high-speed rail.

For our part, my wife and I chose to stay in Beijing and attended festivities at the Longhui 1910 Cultural and Creative Industrial Park in Haidian district, originally Beijing’s first ever winery founded at the beginning of last century. Its old-school industrial brick buildings are now home to several hip cafés, restaurants, artisan shops and sports centers. During this season, its square is the site of traditional Lion Dances and parading dragons, gathering hundreds of residents from the surrounding residential communities. During the days preceding and succeeding the Spring Festival, locals can get lessons in traditional paper-cutting, sugar-paintings, calligraphy and other intangible cultural heritage artforms. 

At one point during the festivities, one of the “lions” barreled toward us two – watching near the back of the crowd – with roses in its “mouth” meant for us, including us in the action and prompting many locals to notice our presence and come and chat. A consistent feeling that we’ve gotten from day one, increasing in proportion to my growing ability to communicate in Chinese, is that China is an incredibly open country and culture for those open to new things. The people here are honored to receive friends coming from afar; genuine curiosity and will to learn should be seen as natural reciprocation.

In a world where many feel atomized and alienated, such examples go to show that careful, attentive and purposeful planning of urban spaces can revitalize communities and organically give rise to constellations of “small towns” even in metropolises of millions. It’s hard to draw a better picture of the current trends in China’s high-quality development than a recovered industrial area taking center stage in the cultural life of a young urban community. A community in which, as we’ve become accustomed to as a foreign couple, we are always treated as welcome guests, even and especially during China’s most important holidays.

This year is the Bingwu Fire Horse Year in China’s sexagenary calendar. As the heavenly stem “Bing” also belongs to the fire element, this year is also called a “double fire year,” promising particular dynamism – not an unreasonable prospect given the acceleration of both international and national developments as concerns China, with the start of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) and the establishment of several medium-term goals that seek to reach the cutting edge and take the lead in many advanced industries, further contributing to global economic growth.

On the cultural front, these advancements are starting to make themselves felt. Hundreds of millions of Chinese people watched humans dance alongside robots during the Spring Festival Gala. We ourselves came across a local robot dancing show when we went sledding at a local park the day before the New Year. For the Spring Festival, the studio Game Science released a new, extremely high-quality in-engine animation for their upcoming game centered around the Daoist divinity Zhong Kui, depicting a fantastical “cooking” scene inspired by China’s traditional cultural mythology and the homely atmosphere of this period; which was then promptly lauded at home and internationally. 

It’s this synthesis of cultural and technological dynamism which will be the undertone for all things China in the upcoming year and as I delve deeper into Chinese language and culture day by day, I’m happy to say I’ll be here to see it.

The author is a comparative legal jurist currently studying Chinese at Beijing Language and Culture University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn