Op-Ed Contributors

Spring Festival through foreigners' eyes

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-02-12 07:56

A big deal indeed

(By Lisa Carducci， a Canadian editor in Beijing)

Everyone is preparing to welcome the Year of the Tiger. During this Spring Festival, China is likely to record 2.5 billion trips, because returning home for family reunion and dinner is the most important thing for Chinese on the eve of lunar new year.

As a result, trains are full and cities not so. The main difference between Spring Festival and New Year is that the former is celebrated over two weeks, while the latter is generally a one-day affair. At the most, students in the West can add a weekend and extend the holiday to three or four days, or a week at the most. And unlike the Chinese, no one in the West can say "there were no tickets" to explain why he or she couldn't return to work on schedule.

During the two decades I have spent in China, I have celebrated Chunjie in Fujian, Zhejiang and Yunnan provinces, Beijing, Macao and the Ningxia Hui autonomous region. But my most memorable celebrations were in a Zhejiang village and Yunnan's Diqing Tibetan autonomous prefecture, because I spent the entire period with families. I saw Han Chinese offering pig's head to their guardian gods, I shared nine kinds of meat with Tibetans with the last meal of the year, I made Muslim-style jiaozi with mutton stuffing, I climbed a mountain on the first day of the year, I visited my host's teachers to offer my best wishes for the new year, I distributed red envelopes (hongbao) to children, I sat among the honorable guests for a horse race in a Tibetan area, and I tasted a huge variety of food.

All this could not have been done in one day, and it was not. The celebrations continued for two weeks, from the eve of the lunar to Lantern Festival, which marks the end of festivities.

Last year, I heard China was trying to "export" Spring Festival. It's fine if it means a cultural exhibition or program. But if Chinese people think Europeans, Americans or Africans will "celebrate" Chunjie they are wrong.

Spring Festival is a family affair. Foreigners are very rarely invited to a new year eve dinner. It is more likely for them to be invited on any of the other day of the holiday.

But tradition is changing. Some city families no longer return to their family homes for a reunion because of the mad rush for tickets or to ensure their children's education is not hampered. Some businesspeople thank their customers by inviting them to banquets or sponsoring their two- or three-night stay in hotels or resorts. Some couples, bored of family reunions, prefer flying abroad or to a remote place in the country for a quiet holiday, and tell their parents they can't return home because you shi'r (they are busy with something). More and more children are sent alone to their grandparents' home in the countryside, while their young fathers and mothers take a rest in the city they have settled in.