MKsport 2025, the last day of the Spring Festival holidays. Photo: VCG" src="https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2025/2025-02-06/1c0e07d0-81f3-47fa-83c9-91e3881f0fb3.jpg" />

Residents in Beijing enjoy the Longtan Temple Fair on February 4, 2025, the last day of the Spring Festival holidays. Photo: VCG

 
The arrival of the Year of the Snake means that Chinese people have grown another year older, and people from three generations — old, middle-aged and young — who were born in the Year of the Snake are celebrating the Spring Festival holidays in different ways. Some of them shared their exclusive Spring Festival memories with the Global Times, and these recollections from different age groups also serve as a microcosm of China's social development.

Zhang Yu, a 24-year-old university graduate born in the Year of the Snake in 2001, has just found her ideal job in 2024, allowing her to relax and enjoy the Spring Festival. She shared her holiday experience with the Global Times, mentioning that she visited Beijing's Spring Festival Temple Fair in Liulichang Street with her friends.

The temple fair, known as the "Cultural Market," has been listed as one of the first national intangible cultural heritage projects of China, with a history of over 400 years.

“The temple fair was filled with the festive atmosphere — some people were performing crosstalk, others were selling lanterns and at night, when the lanterns along the road lit up, many of them were decorated with poetry stickers,” Zhang said. 

Zhang said some coffee shops were also incorporated elements of Chinese culture, such as the phrase "fa cai" (prosperity). Many young people, dressed in traditional Chinese attire, took photos at scenic spots, showcasing their growing cultural confidence.

Wearing hanfu, traditional Chinese clothing, with a snow-white cape draped over her shoulders and a traditional Han Dynasty (202 BC-AD 220) hairstyle, another 24-year-old girl Tang Ning, was among those young people taking photos. This year, she chose to travel during the Spring Festival holidays. 

Tang shared her joy by posting photos on popular Chinese social app RedNote, posing in front of lantern-lit displays in a classical Chinese garden.

For Zhang, this year’s Spring Festival felt different due to a stronger sense of cultural pride, especially as it followed enhanced protections for intangible cultural heritage. She also noticed a surge of foreign users on RedNote ahead of the holiday.

“Enthusiastic netizens shared our traditions and reunion dinner photos with foreigners. Seeing people worldwide engage in discussions about Chinese culture made me feel it’s gaining more global attention,” Zhang said.

Also spending the Spring Festival traveling was 36-year-old Li Hao, an internet industry analyst based in Shanghai. He recalled that at 24, life was simple — he was a single man and his only focus was finishing his college studies. Now, with two children, he faces greater responsibilities but different happiness. For the first time this year, he took his wife and children to East China’s Fujian Province to explore a different side of Chinese culture.

As one of the world’s largest annual human migrations, the Spring Festival sees some traveling south to escape the cold, while others journey north. Li Shuang is 48 years old and was born in Zibo in East China’s Shandong Province. After she got married, she settled in Foshan, South China’s Guangdong Province, and she hasn’t gone back to her hometown to celebrate the Spring Festival for several years.

With modern highways making travel more convenient, she chose to drive 22 hours from Foshan back to Zibo to celebrate the Year of the Snake with her 80-year-old mother. 

“The children laughed and played, while the adults shared stories, talked about life and work, and discussed plans for the year ahead… That was my happiest moment this New Year,” she said with a smile. 

Bringing her children to experience traditional New Year’s culture in Shandong such as making dumplings and ancestral worship, Li said her hometown’s food culture and holiday traditions are very different from those in Cantonese-speaking areas.

Du Lixia, a 60-year-old woman from a rural village in Northeast China’s Jilin Province, savored a variety of delicacies her children brought home during the 2025 Spring Festival, including Chilean cherries priced at around 100 yuan ($13.7) per kilogram.

As she enjoyed the cherries, she reflected on what the Spring Festival was like when she was 24, when her family couldn’t even afford pork. At that time, her family of five carefully rationed just one kilogram of pork, meticulously planning their meals to make ends meet. Today, with improving living conditions, she can indulge in imported fruits that far exceed the price of meat.

Unlike 60-year-olds enjoying retirement, a 36-year-old man surnamed Su told the Global Times that in 2013 he spent the Spring Festival in a foreign company. “I was 24 in 2013 and had just got a job at a foreign company in Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) with a salary of 3,600 yuan per month. But now my income is 10 times greater than back then,” Su said.

“During the Spring Festival, 12 years ago, I couldn’t afford the train ticket home, so I had to stay in Suzhou. But now, with high-speed rail being fast and reasonably priced, I can get home in just a few hours,” Su said.

In February 1994, China and Singapore signed an agreement to develop and build a modern, international industrial park in Suzhou, according to Xinhua Daily.

By 2013, SIP had been established for less than 20 years and had already attracted $18.9 billion in foreign investment, making it the first industrial park in China built through collaboration with a foreign government. The 80-square-kilometer park housed over 2,000 foreign enterprises, including South Korea's tech giant Samsung Electronics, China News Service reported.

Su also mentioned the parallel growth of his career and SIP. Today, SIP has become a benchmark for China’s industrial park development and is striving to build a world-class hub for open innovation and high-tech industries.

“My personal growth aligns with the progress of society. We all move forward together with the great tide of national development. A country is built by millions of families, and I hope that in the next 12 years, both my family and my country will reach even greater heights,” Su said, sharing his hopes for the future.