Op-Ed Contributors
Spring Festival through foreigners' eyes
(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-02-12 07:56
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Memories of festival
(By Eric Sommer, a Canadian teacher in Shandong province)
My wife loves to talk about her childhood memories of Spring Festival. The festival heralds the coming of spring and marks the beginning of the Chinese lunar new year.
My wife grew up in a village in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, where preparations for Spring Festival begin days in advance. Families in her village made or bought new clothes for their children, everyone got a haircut, houses underwent spring cleaning, delicious dishes were prepared, and every family slaughtered one of its biggest pigs to ensure enough meat throughout the festivities.
"Families in the village," says my wife, "would pay off their debts before the Spring Festival ... ... This signaled a fresh start for the new year." Evenings were time for fireworks, which were lit to drive away evil spirits and usher in good luck.
Relatives living in the village or nearby villages and, of course, friends visited one another, exchanging gifts and sharing the latest news and gossip. For most of the winter, the villagers used to eat only two meals a day. But in the run-up to Spring Festival three meals became the norm, and special dumplings were prepared to be eaten on new year's eve.
The first day of the lunar new year saw children running in the village and yelling: "New clothing, new clothing!" Entire families, in new clothes, would rush about happily, greeting or visiting neighbors and friends. The underlining principle of the whole affair was simplicity.
Though more Chinese live in cities today, a majority still live in the countryside, where Spring Festival has the same meaning and importance as when my wife was a child. That's why hundreds of millions of Chinese still travel, hundreds or thousands of kilometers, back home to their towns and villages to celebrate the festival.
Foreigner familiar only with the lavish dinners and pyrotechnics of the cities should know that the spirit of Spring Festival can be more easily found in villages.
