In the animal kingdom, many species—from migratory birds to black bears and sea turtles—exhibit homing abilities that allow them to navigate great distances back to familiar areas. When the Spring Festival arrives, few ideas carry greater meaning in China than the act of going home, a central tradition of the Chinese New Year that centers on family and shared emotional ties among the country’s 1.4 billion people.
As the world enters the Year of the Horse in 2026, a journey across northern China’s grasslands has drawn widespread attention online, uniting people around the long-standing festive traditions of return and reunion.
The long way home
In 2025, a video circulated on Chinese social media showing a Mongolian horse—a breed known for its strength and endurance—that had been sold from its home on the Xilingol grassland in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and transported to a ranch 150 kilometers (93 mi) away. One month later, the animal returned to its original home, having crossed unfamiliar terrain that included hills and valleys.
The three-year-old mare arrived home with a barbed-wire scratch on her foot, along with swelling and abrasions on her face and body. With no witnesses to her return passage, netizens could only speculate about what she may have encountered during the weeks she was away. For local herdsman Namula, who raised and trained horses alongside the mare’s owner from childhood, the homeward journey spoke for itself. “This is the spirit of the Mongolian horse,” he says. “They truly miss their home.”
Equine instincts
In online narratives, the horse’s behavior was sometimes described as loyalty to its owner. Wu Dianjun, a senior veterinarian at Jilin University, notes that such interpretations often reflect how people understand animals with more rigid social hierarchies and clear leadership structures, such as dogs or wolves. “Horses, by contrast, have looser social organization and do not regard humans as leaders within a herd of their own kind,” he explains.
Studies in animal cognition show that horses can reliably sort and remember significant information over long periods, using long-term memory to recognize meaningful experiences, specific individuals, and locations in both wild and domestic settings. “Horses are not believed to understand ‘home’ in a human sense, but they can maintain a general sense of direction over long distances, shaped by spatial memory and continuous orientation,” says Wu Sen, a professor at China Agricultural University in Beijing, “What may appear as loyalty is often a preference for safety and familiarity.”
Research, however, has also shown that horses can mirror human fear and joy through visual and vocal cues, suggesting a basic form of emotional sensitivity and empathy. Even so, while the Mongolian horse’s return to its original owner may be intuitively understood, whether it involved more than a drive toward familiar surroundings remains open to interpretation.
Horses in Mongolian culture
Beyond scientific explanation, the story also reflects the enduring cultural relationship between horses and the people who live alongside them. The animal holds a central place in Mongolian culture, shaping daily life, mobility, and identity. Horsemanship remains a defining tradition, passed down through generations, with many children learning to ride from an early age as part of a living, horse-based way of life.
Where the heart lies
Chinese idioms such as ‘yin shui si yuan’ (‘when drinking water, one must not forget its source’) reflect an ingrained cultural emphasis on attachment to one’s place of origin. In Chinese society, the family plays a central role not only as a physical home, but also as a source of identity and social foundation.
During the Spring Festival travel season, known as ‘chunyun,’ China experiences one of the world’s largest annual human migrations. In 2025, official figures recorded more than 2.3 billion passenger trips during the eight-day holiday, with approximately 9.03 billion inter-regional trips made over the full 40-day period.
One of the most important events of the festive season is the New Year’s Eve reunion dinner, which this year falls on February 16, 2026. On this final meal of the year, family members return from across the country to gather at the table, enjoy auspicious dishes, exchange red envelopes of lucky money, and welcome the new year—a tradition rooted in family ties and shared belonging.
Just as people leave home in search of opportunity elsewhere, animals move away from familiar areas to forage, breed, or, as in the case of the Mongolian horse, through relocation. After the horse returned, its owner reportedly vowed never to sell it again and performed a traditional milk-sprinkling ceremony, a local ritual symbolizing care and belonging. Each Spring Festival, that same impulse plays out on a nationwide scale, as millions of people make their way back home to the place and people they call their own.
Click to reveal your Year of the Horse New Year greeting
To see how the spirit of the horse is expressed during Chinese New Year 2026, visit here.
