Life Upclose

Hundreds of millions of Chinese people are getting back to work as the annual celebrations of the Spring Festival come to an end. As usual, many of them are flocking to big, affluent cities in the hope of finding a better job. Against the backdrop of a slowing economy, the job market is becoming increasingly competitive for both migrant workers and college graduates.

The annual celebrations of the Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, are now underway all across the vast land of China. Mass-scale travelling, family reunions, and temple fairs are the routines of a week-long Spring Festival holiday year after year. The Chinese new year of 2017, which begins on January 28th, is no exception. But there are still some different ways to celebrate and various activities in different regions across the nation.

Choking, smoggy air frequently appears in many cities in China, with residents having to tolerate the pollution from time to time. As a result, more and more people are seeking fresh air and proper rest, away from the urban concrete jungle. Luckily, China is so vast that alternative landscapes can be found, where people can have a good rest and breathe clean air. In the west of Zhejiang Province, east China, a green and pleasant land awaits the millions of urbanites, who are tired of their monotonous city lives.

The Chinese population is rapidly aging after decades of the "one child" policy, greater life expectancy and other factors. How to provide quality care for the huge number of seniors has become a pressing issue. Faced up to this situation, some cities have been exploring new ways to help ease the shortage of quality care for the elderly.

China is home to many of the world's intangible cultural heritages, for instance Kun Qu Opera, a traditional Chinese opera which dominated the country's theatre from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Although Kun Qu has been included on UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the preservation of this traditional opera still faces challenges. Many attempts have been made by Kun Qu performers and other artists to help it strike a chord with younger audiences, most of whom prefer more modern pop culture. One noteworthy attempt comes from cartoonist Lin Cheng-te from Taiwan.

At the moment, more than half of the 1.3 billion Chinese people live in the cities. But urban life isn't always attractive. The fast-pace and hustle and bustle of crowded cities often makes many residents nostalgic about the slow-paced, rural pastoral life of years gone by. Reviving this kind of tranquil life, a small town called Yaxi in eastern China is providing an ideal place for people fed up with the pressure and anxiety of modern urban life.

How to treat the kitchen waste has become a problem for individual Chinese families as well as the nation as a whole. As well as mass scale industrial treatment, one seemingly insignificant invention by a Beijing resident has proved to be very effective in treating the small amount of kitchen waste that a single household produces.

China's art market has seen a boom since the early 2000s with the expansion of the Chinese economy producing a number of super-rich businessmen. It's become a normal picture for Chinese collectors and investors to throw millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars at a painting or porcelain vase at international auction events. Now this fervent search of fine, luxurious art is being accompanied with a more down-to-earth chase for lower-end, affordable artworks. Unlike the fine art market, the emerging demand for personal but affordable artistic belongings has been driven by the vast number of China's middle class in mega cities, especially Beijing and Shanghai. (This program is hosted by Sam Duckett, written and produced by Yin Xiuqi)

The hardships and poverty stereotype of rural farm life is embedded in the minds of many parents in China, who are keen for their children to find decent jobs in the cities rather than out in the fields planting rice or crops. But there is an emerging group of young people, born in the 1980s or 1990s, who are trying to shatter the age-old image of traditional Chinese peasants with their use of modern equipment in farming. (This program is hosted by Sam Duckett, written and produced by Yin Xiuqi)

China is the world's most populous nation on earth. A lot of these people have managed to make a lot of money--and they are creating a tourism boom at home. In a bid to capitalize on this new phenomenon, some inland villages with picturesque natural environments are transforming themselves into tourist attractions.One such village is located in the southwest of eastern Zhejiang Province, which has built an artificial seaside drawing inspiration from the French capital of Paris.