This year, the Western holiday fell on the fifth day of the Chinese lunar New Year, in the middle of family gatherings and feasts that often focus on gossip, including who is getting married and who is going to have a baby.
While the holiday used to be a period of family reunions and big feasts, many Chinese are now choosing to escape the winter pollution and the vastly overstretched domestic travel infrastructure by taking an outbound trip instead.
And then, when we had finished that course, the same came on all over again; it was as good as two feasts.
