Rich or poor, go home for the New Year - this saying captures the Chinese people's deep attachment to family reunions

"Rich or poor, go home for the New Year" is a widely circulated folk saying, meaning that no matter how much one earned or how things went during the year away from home, one should return home to reunite with family at Spring Festival. This saying expresses the importance Chinese people place on family reunion during the New Year festival, and also reflects the deep roots of family values in rural society. For many people who work, do business, or study away from home, going home for the New Year is not just a custom but an emotional homecoming.

This saying is closely related to China's traditional farming culture. Spring Festival itself is a festival celebrating the harvest and ringing out the old year and ringing in the new, and a family sitting together for the New Year's Eve dinner, staying up late on New Year's Eve, and paying New Year calls is the most central part of the New Year customs. In the old days, after a year of farm work in the countryside, people mostly had leisure to return home only around Spring Festival, and over time going home for Spring Festival became an established practice, and this saying was passed down from generation to generation along with it.

Today, a large number of rural laborers go to cities to work, and usually spend little time with their families, so returning home for Spring Festival carries an even heavier weight of family affection. The Spring Festival travel rush that appears every year around Spring Festival is precisely a real-life reflection of this saying. No matter how scarce the tickets or how long the journey, many people still choose to set out on the road home, just to have a reunion dinner and see the elderly and children at home.

Some people also feel that reunion does not necessarily have to be bound to form, and that keeping in touch and showing care more often on ordinary days is equally important. But it cannot be denied that going home for the New Year carries the simple family emotions of Chinese people and is an important way of maintaining kinship and continuing family traditions. No matter how the times change, the rural attachment and the idea of reunion carried by this saying are always the warmest undertone in Spring Festival culture.