There’s probably no other time of the year when the Chinese mind so much how they look in their cars as during the Spring Festival — a traditional time of glorious homecoming, known as yi jin huan xiang in Chinese idiom.

In ancient times, the return home required the wearing of fine new clothes. In today’s times, what one drives is considered an important fashion accessory.

Indeed, owning a car now sends the message of “having arrived” without even having to honk the horn.

The run-up to the Spring Festival is a prime season for car shopping. And during the past holiday itself, when car owners drove to hometowns, Shanghai streets became blissfully uncongested.

More often than not in modern China culture, a car is a sign of status. It’s a facet of “face consumption” that I once found particularly distasteful. I have always believed that I live for myself and not to “keep up with the Joneses.” However, deep down, I know that the culture one grows up with always exerts a lasting influence.

That truth was brought home to me during a gathering of friends in the run-up to the Spring Festival. I started to wonder if I am, or want to be, what I drive — a year-old Mazda Axela.

“Still driving that clunker?” a media colleague teased. “Come on, you are an auto journalist. Go get a premium car. Be aware of how you present yourself in this industry.”

“Come on,” I replied. “You are an auto journalist, too. You have seen the world. Don’t be so superficial.”

The world we live in is so judgmental, and sometimes hypocritical. We grow being taught that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, yet that’s what we do in sizing up people by their possessions. We grow up being taught to keep some opinions to ourselves. But do we?

For a long time, I thought my job trained me well to remain cool about cars and the people who drive them. But in reality, that’s sometimes hard to do. I felt a sense of inadequacy swell up in me when I heard that a cousin from the countryside recently bought a Buick Verano — a bigger, more expensive car than mine.

Just when I was trying to quell my jealousy and self-pity, remembering the words of my motoring colleague, I found there were no more available temporary license plates on the black market to allow me to keep driving my car. Sixteen months of failure at winning a plate in the Shanghai lottery were about to leave me carless for the Spring Festival. Oh, great!

“Don’t worry,” said my friend Alex. “You can have my car when I am away.”

In return, I gave him the keys to a media test drive Volvo I had access to. It was more car than I cared to handle.

So there I was, behind the wheel of his BMW 5 sedan for a week. Though I had experience with luxury cars before, this was for the first time it was something more than a quick test drive. I drove it like I owned it. And everything immediately felt so different from driving my Mazda.

For one thing, I found myself driving with more confidence, and I noticed that other cars on the road were extra polite to me. Parking lot attendants were being particularly hospitable and helpful. I had become a captive of motorist hierarchy, even if only in my own mind.

I recalled Alex telling me how his BMW allowed him to drive through certain nicer neighborhoods as shortcuts without being shooed away by security guards, who assumed from his self-assured manner that he lived there.

“Is feedback from others a large part of a good image?” I wondered. “You need someone to applaud you, create some fanfare? Otherwise, it would be just self-adoration.”

Those were my thoughts when Alex returned after the Spring Festival from his hometown, driving a Volvo XC90 I managed to lend him in exchange. Though it is a top-range SUV model of the Swedish premium brand, it didn’t receive due accolades from his families and friends. His experience was the opposite of glorious homecoming. Rather it was yi jin ye xing, or “wearing fine new clothes on a dark night.”

“Did you tell them this car is synonymous with the Swedish royal family and costs twice more than your BMW?” I asked, disappointed that my efforts to please had been such a failure.

“Well, my home used to be a BMW town,” Alex shrugged. “People there don’t know much about other cars. But this Volvo is such a great car that I felt downgraded getting back into mine.”

BMW’s reputation as the car of the nouveau riche is well served in his hometown. The culture got off to a rousing start there, setting the tone for years to come. The choice of a car brand was not only a method of self-identification but also a measure of social recognition.

“The word ‘car’ has become so loaded and complicated, like the word ‘love,’” I said to myself. “I should be careful about giving any advice on what car to drive.”

My friend Georgina has been consulting me about which car to buy for half a year. She and her husband have been arguing about the choice. Their recent Spring Festival homecoming was another opportunity for family debate.

She wants a Mercedes-Benz CLA. He prefers a Ford Mustang. The debate is sort of refined taste versus rugged character, I thought at first.

“Now I see where a car can lead you, to a marriage going nowhere,” Georgina said ruefully.

“Don’t be silly,” I wanted to tell her. “Why are you making such a big deal out of it? It’s just a car.”

But I swallowed my words. I guessed how stressful life must be for newlyweds in the first few months, when the reality of compromise sets in. They are at the point of sacrifice fatigue as they contemplate buying a car, a daily reminder of how one can lead a life his own way by taking the driver’s seat.

I finally tried my hand as some peacemaking.

“Your choices are both imported cars, easily costing you a fortune,” I ventured to note.

“With the same money, you could have chosen a locally made car with higher market positioning. So congratulations. You two still have common ground,” I pondered the fact that a good image is for those who don’t really care about cost-effectiveness.

Now that the holiday is over and with a new black market license plate waiting for me in the wings, I plan to jump back into my Mazda with the joy of homecoming in my heart.