Stressed-out urbanites sometimes decide they are not up to a heavy round of visiting and celebrating, and instead go away for a relaxing vacation. With the difficulty involved in getting travel bookings, it can be a matter of leaving before the holiday or not at all. Affluence is one reason for the heavy outbound holiday traffic at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, which greatly exceeds the number of inbound flights. According to statistics from the Tourism Bureau, nearly 470,000 people went abroad during February of last year. This is second only to the number of people who left the country during July, the month of summer vacation.
People today have more alternatives, and some choose to break with tradition and simply take a trip.
On the other hand, as more people than ever are living abroad, a family group spread out around the globe may get together at a mutually convenient holiday resort. Or, given the difficulty of getting everybody together, sometimes just the immediate family may decide to get away from all the hassle and take a vacation break by themselves. For others, the pressures of business, particularly for the small and medium-sized businesses so numerous in Taiwan, mean there are not many other opportunities to take time off. Wearing new clothes during the New Year holiday, a tradition from ancient times to begin the year with a fresh start, while still a practice, is no longer a novelty. For Taiwanese of the present, wearing new clothes is a very common occurrence.