So it's well known that ordering anything from overseas during CNY is basically like pissing into the wind since everything shuts down for a lengthy time period. With that being said, WHEN does it actually kick off (February???) so one would know when to order before it all slows down?
This year CNY is just a month away, end of January. At the very least, expect workers to start pootling off to their hometowns in about two weeks time, man.
Any possibility of a worker burst in the next three weeks to get some odds and ends out. If it were me, I'd try and clear my desk before I went on vacation with just a bit less to think about before I came back. Perhaps Grinder gets squeezed out. Certainly the QC issues were addressed with Stomp last year.
This year it's Jan 27-Feb 2. Typically everything shuts down, save grocery stores, some other stores, and some restaurants. And generally everyone will go back to work on Friday the 3rd...with probably a make up day on the 4th. However, factories tend to shut down longer sometimes 2-3 weeks. This is because factory workers generally give up the week long National Day holiday in October along with various other holidays throughout the year. The Spring Festival (CNY) is usually the only time during the year that these workers (many of them migrants) make the long journey home to be with their families. Added to this is that sometimes those workers will accept jobs at other factories, closer to home, over that holiday time, leaving their old jobs scrambling to fill in their roles, or sometimes a company will just have a complete worker change over (which sometimes leads to QC issues...on all sorts of products). So to outside of China it seems like "Hey, the entire country shuts down for a month. They don't need that much time off!!!!", but it actuality it's not that way at all.
Possibly but that's not always a good thing. XTB squeezed out a run of their Beachcomber just before CNY last year and they were rife with issues. The problem seems to be that workers slow down or just get distracted at this time of year and the results may not be great. I know I'm generally a lot less productive in the lead up to a holiday like XMas.