Harry Li wants to spend the Lunar New Year holiday in his home village in northern China’s Hebei province, but he is afraid of spending more than 12 hours on crowded trains and buses lest he bring COVID-19 to his elderly parents, who have not been vaccinated. “It’s been three years since I’ve been home [for Lunar New Year],” says Li, a 20-year-old law student in Shanghai. “I was vaccinated nine months ago, but everyone around me is still getting sick.”
Many Chinese face a similar conundrum. For decades, the Lunar New Year holiday was renowned as humanity’s largest annual migration, when hundreds of millions travel from China’s freewheeling coast back to ancestral villages to feast and toast with elderly kin. During the pandemic, strict controls and state-led incentive schemes…