Discovering the meaning of winter solstice

The late afternoon sun of winter warmed us as we bowed before the front door of that little whitewashed house in the mountains of rural Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. There we prayed to the ancestors, whose table before us carried a delicious spread of home-cooked dishes from my mother-in-law's kitchen. The tempting aromas of chili peppers, garlic and ginger mingled with the faint fragrance of papermade ancestor money burning on the ground. As I stood together with my husband and his relatives, I had this strange feeling of deja vu, as if I had been there before somehow, somewhere in my life.

And in a way, I had.

Before I married into a Chinese family from rural Hangzhou, I had never known anyone in the United States who celebrated the winter solstice as an actual holiday. But once I moved back to China with my husband in 2013, I finally had the opportunity to experience a traditional winter solstice celebration in all its splendor.