How Li-li Celebrated the Spring Festival

There were just a couple of days to go until the Spring Festival. Li-li couldn’t wait. She and her mum would stick bright red cutouts of lucky symbols in the windows. The streets would be full of firecrackers well into the night, and all the children would be given special red envelopes. Inside their envelope, they would each find a bank note, which they could use to buy treats. Li-li would play lots of games with her family and their table would be piled high with delicious food. The Spring Festival was always so colourful and so much fun – everyone loved it!

But this year Li-li’s parents seemed to be getting more and more worried as the festival approached. They had been looking forward to celebrating all together as a family at their grandparents’ house, like they did every year, but they hadn’t been able to get hold of any train tickets.

Li-li was only four, but she already knew that her grandma and grandpa lived a very long way away. When she went on the train with her parents to visit them, the journey took all day and all night. Her parents were very busy at work, so they only travelled there once a year, for the biggest festival of the year – the Spring Festival. At that time, nearly everyone in China travelled to see their relatives, and that meant that to get any bus or train tickets you had to wait in a very long queue. Li-li’s parents had left it just slightly too late this year and there were no tickets left.

Li-li’s grandma and grandpa lived in a small village. They didn’t go to work any more, but they still looked after their garden, where they grew…