Many of the 60,000 overseas students who have been hitting the books in Beijing in recent months are looking forward to Spring Festival with the same excitement as their Chinese classmates.

Beldy is among them.

He has been missing his family in Tunisia for many months but study at Beijing Language and Culture Institute and work have kept him busy in China's capital.

Now, thanks to the extended break he and all students in China get for Spring Festival, the student, who is the son of an American father and a French mother, is planning that long-overdue visit home.

"I'm going to have such a great time," he said.

"I'll go skiing and eat some delicious cakes in France and then, when I'm back in Tunisia, I'll be able to spend the holiday with my family.

"It will be just like Christmas."

And Beldy is far from alone in wanting to get back to his home country.

For many students, it was a struggle to spend the Christmas and New Year period - traditionally holidays in the West - taking exams.

Now the exams are over, they are ready to relax.

The Spring Festival holiday in China also coincides neatly with the resumption of study and regular life at universities back in many home countries.

Having just completed a year of Chinese language study, Kate and Jeanne plan to return to their home countries and resume their studies there.

"It's a reluctant departure," said Kate, a Beijing Normal University (BNU) graduate who will return to England. She says she will soften the blow by eating dim sum with her parents in London.

Jeanne is looking forward to bringing New Zealanders into the year of the tiger by pasting Fu, the character for happiness and fortune, upside down on her door back home.

It indicates fu dao le or "fortune's arrived here" and she will do it to remind Kiwi's that spring has arrived north of the equator.

Some foreign students are preparing to join the throng of Chinese people traveling throughout the country, even if that means initially navigating the massive lineups at Beijing railway station.

Nahoko, from Japan, is looking forward to experiencing the festival further south in China's mainland, in warmer climes.

She says there will be crushing crowds and inflated prices "but at least I won't be alone".

She said Spring Festival is not celebrated in Japan with the same raucous enthusiasm it generates in Korea and China.

Jae Duck, from Seoul, has been studying at BNU and has decided to return home to South Korea, knowing that will mean missing the fortnight of fireworks in Beijing.

"(Spring Festival in Beijing) is just like a war!" he said.