SHENZHEN slowed during the Spring Festival holiday, leaving shopping malls, roads and public transport almost vacant, but some migrant residents chose to stay in the city instead of returning to their hometowns.

    Li comes from Zhanjiang, a city in the west part of Guangdong Province, and has lived in Shenzhen for eight years. The young man began working in the city after he graduated from a university in Shenzhen. The young man bought an apartment in Longhua New Area with his parents’ support.

    Li spent time with his family during the past eight Spring Festival holidays, four times in Shenzhen and four times in his hometown.

    In Li’s eyes, the festival atmosphere in Shenzhen is not as dynamic as in his hometown. Many shops shut during the festival, but tourist sites become overcrowded with visitors, according to Li.

    For Li, the most important thing to do during the Lunar Chinese New Year is to be with one’s family and the location of the gathering does not matter. This year, Li enjoyed his family gathering in Shenzhen again with most of his relatives coming from Zhanjiang.

    Many other migrant residents, however, were not as lucky as Li, who had a choice. A man surnamed Zhang from Chongqing had to stay in Shenzhen for the holiday because he had to work and could not buy train tickets back home.

    Both Zhang and his wife are working in Shenzhen as cleaners for a property management company. They are paid around 2,300 yuan (US$354) each month. In order to make ends meet, the couple works at a restaurant during their lunch break.

    Zhang’s wife said that it was extremely hard to buy train tickets to go home during the holiday rush because they did not know how to book tickets on the Internet. Extra work also made it impossible for the couple to go back to join their two sons at home.

    The couple plans to go back to their hometown in March when the traffic is not as intensive during the holiday. The wife said the family would leave Shenzhen for good in two or three years because the cost of living in the city is too high. (Zhang Qian)