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Lifestyle
Print Edition> Lifestyle
UPDATED: February 27, 2010 NO. 9 MARCH 4, 2010
Ringing in the New
Tradition and the contemporary blend in Spring Festival celebrations
By LIU XINLIAN
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DANCING DRAGON: A dragon performance is mounted at the temple fair in Nanning, capital of southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region during Spring Festival this year (HUANG XIAOBANG) 

No matter where they are or what they are doing, the Spring Festival lures every Chinese to their family like a highly attractive magnet.

Days before the big event, the most important traditional festival of China, Chinese queued in long lines in front of train ticket offices for tickets to their hometown. Looking at a waiting room in a train or bus station or an airport full of passengers whose eyes are filled with eagerness and longing for their family reunions, you will understand what the festival means to every Chinese.

In terms of cultural values and its spiritual implications, the Spring Festival is the most important intangible cultural heritage of Chinese people, said Feng Jicai, Vice President of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, who recently called on to apply the Spring Festival to be one of the world cultural heritage.

The Spring Festival celebration actually starts as early as December 8 on the lunar calendar. During the entire festival season which stretches to January 15 on the lunar calendar, different events and customs that involve different themes even food are practiced for thousands of years.

On December 8 according to the lunar calendar, people usually eat pickled garlic and a special porridge made from various materials including millets, rice, Chinese dates, lotus seeds and walnuts. The day of December 23 on the lunar calendar, known as "the small year," is the festival's most important day preceding New Year's Eve. According to tradition, all family members should gather and eat malt sugar, and pay tribute to the God of the Kitchen. December 24 is the house cleaning day, and the making of tofu should take place on December 25, which implies welcoming good fortune in the coming year.

The month-long preparations climax on New Year's Eve. Wealthy or impoverished, each family will provide the biggest dinner they can afford. Family members sit at a round table and enjoy a sumptuous meal and a loving atmosphere. They are supposed to eat slowly until midnight when dumplings are served as the final dish. During the whole season, no inauspicious words should be articulated. Instead for good luck during the new year the use of auspicious words such as yu (extra), xi (happiness) and fu (welfare) is encouraged.

Since "fish" is pronounced in Chinese the same as the character yu, which means "extra," it is an indispensable dish on the menu. In some parts of China, another important dish is rice cake.

On the eve, no one should go to bed until the New Year arrives. At that moment, fireworks light the sky and disperse all bad luck.

On January 1 according to the lunar calendar, people get up early, dress in their best clothes and present New Year's greetings to their neighbors, friends and relatives.

Observed for generations and generations, traditional Chinese New Year celebrations have begun to take on a new look with the evolution of time.

An important part of celebrating the New Year takes place as people decorate houses with red spring couplets, Chinese sayings for good luck written on red paper. In the old times, literate people, usually teachers, were invited to write couplets for friends and neighbors with a brush pen.

"Decades ago, villagers came to my house and asked me to write couplets as the festival drew near. I usually created different couplets for each family in accordance with their different situations and wishes. Usually villagers all appreciated the couplets and talked together about them," said Su Nianhua, a 70-year-old villager from eastern Jiangsu Province.

Old traditions began to change almost 10 years ago. "Now people buy printed couplets and no one asks me to write them because it is more convenient to buy a pair of them," Su said.

Obviously, traditional folklore has been abandoned with the advancing pace of industrialization.

As the most important meal of the year, the New Year Eve meal was previously made in the home and dished up, but now it has turned into a golden business opportunity for the catering industry.

Huang Chao, a corporate manager in Beijing, took his family to a restaurant to have dinner on New Year's Eve. "My mother is too old to prepare a big feast and the younger generations in my family are too lazy to cook," said Huang.

While family reunions enjoy top priority among all the New Year customs, more and more Chinese are making use of the long vocation to take a trip. Li Lei, a 35-year-old securities analyst in Beijing went to Sanya, a world-famous coastal city in China's Hainan island for a holiday with his wife.

Li was one of many who took tours during the New Year. The National Tourism Administration said 1,250 million trips had been made during the seven-day holiday of the Spring Festival, an increase of 14.8 percent year on year.

Even the New Year greetings take on a new look as a result of the progress of information technology. During the festival, Beijing resident Wang Jian received more than 200 text messages from his friends, relatives and even clients. Although the childhood memory of visiting friends and relatives for greetings is still fresh in his mind, Wang is also used to the digital manner of conveying them.

Though perhaps depressing for those with a nostalgic bent, the celebration of the Spring Festival has changed and will keep changing forever.



 
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