Follow the Flock: Jack Sirek captures the Chinese New Year in Shanghai
By Jack Sirek | Mar. 25, 2019SHANGHAI — The Chinese New Year, also called the Spring Festival, is an annual holiday in China that celebrates the end of one lunar year and the beginning of another. The Lunar Calendar has a twelve year cycle with one of twelve animals being the animal of the year. 2019 is the Year of the Pig, symbolizing wealth. The celebration, which includes families gathering together, special meals eaten on specific days, and religious traditions, lasts for fifteen days. A large amount of people leave the big cities to join family in their hometowns resulting in what is known as the largest human migration on the planet. An estimated three billion trips were made this year. Though many left the massive metropolis for the week, I arrived in Shanghai, a city that in recent years has seen a large population increase and rapid development, for the first several days of the Spring Festival.
