Why cherish our Lunar New Year

Despite worries over the increasing interest Chinese youngsters have demonstrated in Western festivals like Christmas and Valentine's Day, the Lunar New Year's Day, or Spring Festival, still appeared, in the seven-day holiday last week, to be the happiest, coziest and most meaningful occasion of the year for Chinese people.

That was evidenced by the fact that hundreds of millions, whether white collar professionals or rural migrant workers, packed themselves into every means of transportation to travel hundreds or thousands of kilometers to return to their hometowns, even if it had to be a last minute arrival, for the New Year's Eve reunion dinner. More evidence: the fact that the amount of fireworks set off doubled from last year and the fact that temple fairs across the country were bursting with pilgrims and holiday merrymakers, both silver haired and tender voiced.

At midnight on Spring Festival Eve, when I watched fireworks flying into the air with colorful and dazzling sparks scattering across the sky amid deafening sputters of firecrackers, some thoughts came to my mind. Most of the festival pleasures - eating good food, wearing new clothes, watching entertainment performances - are no longer a once-a-year luxury. Then, why do Chinese still treasure Spring Festival so much? No doubt what people treasure most today is not - at least not only - material comfort but something in the spiritual sense.