Although the phoenix can fly high and far, and beyond most hunting tools' range, creating an attractive nest for them would enable one to lure in these graceful, powerful and most sought after birds.

For thousands of years in China, home has been an important political and management tool used by the emperors and governments to lure overseas Chinese back to the motherland.

Towards the end of the era of the East Han Dynasty, a man with great wisdom, Xu Shu, helped Liu Bei's small army crushed and burned up the much larger army of Cao Chao, the hated prime minister of the Han Dynasty then. However, Cao Chao managed to force Xu Shu into leaving Liu Bei almost immediately by tricking Xu Shu's mother to come to live in Xu Chang, a territory under his control, and imitated Xu Shu's mother's hand writing to lure Xu Shu to travel to Xu Chang see her.

When Kong Ming (Also known as Zhuge Liang), one of the most well known war strategist in Chinese history, became interested in the ability and talent of Jiang Wei, the leading general of the opposing side, the only way to win his heart was to send for Jiang Wei's mother, and to please her with great courtesies. One word of advice from Jiang Wei's mother to him dissolved all of his doubts and brought him into a life long royal service under Kong Ming.

In Chongqing, after months of hard work, I managed to attract one of the most talented executives from a state enterprise to become interested in my company (a joint venture of the C.P. Group of Thailand). When that state enterprise learned of the young man's intention to leave them for my company, they demanded that he pay them a relatively high sum of compensation for the training he had received while working there. I immediately agreed to shoulder that cost as a measure to acquire his talent and service. However, when all else failed to stop the young man's decision to leave, his boss imposed a knocked out punch, "All right, if you really want to leave us, bring your mother along to where you go, we will recall the flat now allocated to your retired mother and will immediately stop her retirement payment and welfare coverage from us." That did the trick, the young man called me to apologize for having had to change his mind about joining me.

As a result of the dazzling speed of economic development of the leading cities in China, such as, Shenzhen, Dong Guan, Guangzhou, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Shantou in the Pearl River Delta, Ningbo, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing, Wuxi, in the Yangze River Delta, and Qingdao, Tianjin, Yantai, Weihai, Jinan, Dalian, in Bohai Gulf area, these cities have been engaging in very fierce competitions to attract the human resources and talents to these cities.

As mentioned in another earlier article in this column, one of the best-known strategies is called the "Mother-in-Law" politics. While the Chinese outstanding scholars, scientist, engineers, and managers both in China and abroad are quite independent from their families when it comes to their career developments, however, most of them are believed to be highly considerate about their own family's happiness and desires. Hence, the wives' preferences can, in a very influential way, impact their decisions on their choices of the city to settle down and to develop their careers in. As an important part of the Chinese culture, wives usually show their gratefulness to their own parents by respecting and obeying their parents' opinions as to where to live, especially when it comes to the wives looking after their parents.

In the last 5 years, some of these competing cities had gone out of their way to attract these "mother-in-laws" with various special considerations as part of their city development plans. In doing so, they influenced the decisions of these targeted talents' choice of city to settle down, thus, this helped to reassure their investors, especially foreign investors of the availability of these talents.

Among one the changes in China since the current government came into power in 1949 is the land reform scheme, that is, every citizen in non urban areas is allocated a piece of land from the moment of their birth. Most of the urban inhabitants who work for the state enterprises and major Chinese companies are also given, either at a favoured cost or free of charge, a flat, according to his or her family size.

In short, with the exception of a very few, most Chinese have houses or farmland and homes in the farming hometown. For most, no matter where they may go for their studies, they all have a home with their parents and with the hometown folks waiting for their return, at least for important festivals and occasions. Essentially, in their mind, a home trip is a must during the Lunar New Year (also known as Spring Festival), if not, at least during the long weekend of the Golden Weeks.

Like the tides in the sea, these predictable and unstoppable home coming flows of people each year has become a greater and greater problem for the transportation authorities and the companies that employ these hundreds of millions of Chinese. Practically no amount of monetary incentives or disciplinary threats could change their minds about "Going Home". Employing the great American wisdom, "If you cannot beat them, join them," the Chinese government has made these annual home coming seasons official holidays by creating three-weeks long "Golden Week" holidays during the Lunar New Year (also known as Spring Festival), May Day, and National Day.

This year, the so called "Spring Traffic", the flow of people travelling to home towns and back, officially begins today (20 January), 10 days ahead of January 30, 2006, which marks the beginning of the new lunar year. Since two weeks ago, advance booking of train tickets were opened at various temporarily sites, such as, the sport stadiums, in various parts of the cities in China. Today, being the first day of "Spring Traffic", if you can fly over the Shanghai railway station, you would have difficulty seeing the surface of the huge plaza in front of that station because every available inch of space is occupied by very many people waiting for their trains.

For many people, coming home means a 20-36 hours trip on the train and up to another 2-8 hours on local buses. The cost of the tickets alone may well represent a big chunk of their salaries. Among their crudely packed bags are the new articles of clothing, white liquors, branded cigarettes, ginseng and any other healthy food supplements for their parents and family members at home, plus some new clothes for themselves. Microwaves, TV sets, and even Personal Computers are also some of the frequent items that make up this list. Stuffed somewhere in their bags are also a considerable sum of their savings that they bring home with them.

On the subway train heading for Shanghai Railway Station, there was a couple representing these coming home rural migrant workers. Both appeared to be timid and contended with themselves being surrounded by several items of their bags. Although both appeared to be wearing their newest and best clothing, their very dark skin, crudely groomed hairs and timid manners left a clear sign that they were most likely part of the tens of thousands of construction workers in Shanghai. They have started their holiday home-ward trip 10 days earlier to avoid the big rush. Despite their relatively timid and humble appearances, as time goes by, more and more of their importance and contributions to the development of the cities in China are being recognised.

While the development boom in China has caused increased flows of rural Chinese to migrate to the cities for employment, traditionally, these cities employed various tactics against these "outsiders" in order to avoid "overburdening" the cities. Recently, many cities have eased their traditional constraints on employment, such as, health care, taxes and children's education or these great contributors to their cities' development and modernisation.

Mayor Chen Liang Yu of Shanghai had just announced in the city's council that, "We have hardly done enough for these rural migrant workers for what they have contributed to our city's progress."

Mayor Wang Qi Shan of Beijing, in the same time last week, announced to his city council against a rumour that the city would limit the number of the rural migrant workers to 20% of the city's population in no uncertain terms, "No way. We will never set any limits on the migrations of the rural workers to Beijing because they are too important to Beijing's development."

I noticed last year that, even most of the beggars that normally stationed or patrolled the busy streets of Shanghai disappeared during the Golden Weeks! Apparently, they too, followed that great Chinese tradition, "Coming Home for the New Year".

"Although Nanjing is only hundreds of kilometers from Taipei, it has taken me 60 years to be back here; I am so glad to be home."

That was announced by Lian Zhan, the Chairman of the Nationalist Party of Taiwan in April, 2005 at the tarmac of Nanjing airport. Lian Zhan's trip to China has in all practical aspect, disabled the then intensifying call for "Independence Taiwan" of Chen Shui-Bian. Lian Zhan, with his former beauty queen wife, and his gentle, sharp and homely speeches, instantly easily made them the darlings among the mainland Chinese.

"Lian grandpa, you have finally come home!" uttered a school-children, has become a famous sentence that keep lingering, on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Lian's homeward trip was followed by another prominent former presidential candidate from Taiwan, Song Chu-Yu, and the trip of another minority party leader, Li Ao, a highly vocal scholar and politician in Taiwan. Together, these homeward bound waves of prominent leaders to Taiwan have led to the increasing support of voters there for the pro-unification "blue fractions," and the recent devastation of the pro secession green fractions.

Originally, the rivalry between the governments in Taiwan and Mainland China has left fears of a sudden military assault across the Taiwanese Strait, especially by air. Since the late eighties, Taiwanese residents have found Mainland China to be a land of new hope for their fiercely competitive businesses on the island. The first generation of Taiwanese investors had to channel their funds and their trips to the mainland through another country or region, such as, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada or the United States of America, in order to avoid trouble with the ruling government on the island. Then as the mutual trust grew, the cross strait flows of investments, businesses, and students increased. On the average, the cross strait travel has reached almost one trip for each resident of Taiwan each year.

Yet for various reasons, direct cross strait air transportation is still not allowed! Normally, a trip from Taiwan to main land must be routed with via a transfer flight either in Macao or Hong Kong, adding approximately 200 million dollars to the costs each year. The millions of residents of Taiwan now working, investing or studying in mainland China have been hoping and waiting for the day when that homeward trip can be taken by a one-hour trip from Shanghai to Taipei! Hence, a novel idea was initiated and mooted in 2003 for the Lunar New Year to realise this hope.

In 2003, through the approvals granted by the governments and aviation authorities on both side of the strait, a number of "home for the New Year flights" were authorised and granted to the Taiwanese airlines. Passengers were allowed to take the same plane from China to Taiwan and back by making q stopover at the airport either in Hong Kong or Macao, without requiring them to get off the plane and go through the immigration procedures at the airports.

However, these flights were cancelled in 2004 due to the disagreement between the two sides about how these flights should be routed, and/or whether to allow airlines on the mainland the same rights as the airlines in Taiwan.

In 2005, these flights were resumed between Shanghai and Taipei with equal number of airlines and flights from both sides but limited to the number of passengers to the Taiwanese investors, their employees and their families, excluding students from Taiwan and relatives of these students and businessmen. These flights did not have to land in a mid way airport any more; it simply took a detour through the air space of Hong Kong or Macao.

In 2006, the students, and the tourists from Taiwan were accepted in these flights without the restrictions imposed in 2005. The number of flights and city of destinations also have increased to include Kaoshiung, Tai Chung, Xiamen, Guangzhou, and Beijing.

Today, the first flight from Taiwan has just arrived in Shanghai to the elaborate welcoming by local Shanghai officials. Planes used in these special flights are the best and newest planes of the companies involved, with special insignias to mark this special home coming occasion of the lunar new year.

Despite all flights being fully booked, the airlines have maintained their incessant and constant publicities about their special considerations for the flights, such as, the use of cabin crew with fluent spoken Taiwanese dialects, the specially selected experienced to the beautiful air stewardesses, the special Taiwanese and Shanghainese delicacies for in-flight meals to the specially decorated interior of the cabin and the specially designed new cabin crew uniforms. All were said to aim at one goal, "We want our passengers to feel at home even before arriving home."

Messages have appeared in various BBS and chatting boards, mostly from young girls seeking a "temporary boyfriend" to bring home to please their parents.

Half a century of living in the "homogenous" society where everyone is expected to live the same way with everyone else, one thing has represented the change of those time in this era of opening up and change. Parents of these youngsters going to schools or working in the cities away from home tend to take pride in comparing the achievements of their children.

This has given rise to many needlessly elaborate new and spacious homes in many rural villages. However, one point of comparison has put heavy pressures on these working young girls is when their parents consider themselves losing face when girls of other families returned home with their boyfriends, husbands and even babies in tow while their own girl came home alone!

Some of these modern educated girls simply wished to enjoy their personal independence, career development and freedom rather than settle down into an intimate relationship so soon after graduation.

Some of these "shamed" parents complained bitterly to their daughters for their "backwardness" or "ungratefulness" to their parents. As a result, many of these tearful young female members of my "Shanghai Speak English Club" chose not to return home for the New Year.

A few years ago, somebody came up with a novel idea of "rent a boyfriend home." These girls simply rented a male partner for RMB100-150 per day, to pretend to be her boyfriend when they when back to her hometown for a visit. This would, at least, remove the anxiety of her parents and to let them have a happy new year, while relieving the girls of the pressures of coming home without a male partner!

Many restaurants employing out-of-town workers were left with minimal skeletal workers during and after the Golden Weeks. Some were even forced to close during the holidays for lack of staff. Typically anxiety among the restaurants and factory bosses are at the peak during and at the end of these annual coming home "Golden Weeks." Some of the factories had to set up recruitment desks at the train and bus stations to recruit new replacements as some of them simply decided to stay on at home or try for a new job with another company or in another city after the holidays.

In the TV news, scenes of long lines of people at the ticketing offices, and people asking each other, "Have you gotten your tickets?" there is one group of workers that do not experience such troubles or worries at all. They know confidently exactly when and how they will be home for the lunar new year (also known as Spring Festival). These are the workers from a large garment factory. Since three years ago, the company's adopted a new policy to remove these workers' annual anxieties about "Going Home."

Supervisors would survey each of the worker's hometowns and their decision whether they wish to go home or to have their parents come to see them in the city where they work. Then the information is processed by the planning department and set as traffic routes and schedules. The company then chartered several luxury air-conditioned tour buses to bring these workers to their hometowns or to pick up the families of the workers that chose to stay behind to visit them in the city instead. At the end of the holidays, these buses would send the workers' family home while picking up those workers who have gone home for the holidays back to the city. All done, and everyone is very happy. As it turns out to expectations, the productivity of this company has been so much higher than its competitors while worker turnover rates were nearly zero!

I remember a movie that I watched in the U.S. during the 60's as it vividly captured my very own homeward bound decision called "Home is where the heart belong."

Also, another thousand-year old Chinese wisdom that the imperial advisors repeated countless of times to the emperors during critical times when making decisions, "He who wins the hearts of the people, wins everything under the sky."