Finding the key to Lunar New Year
- By Daniel Xu
0 Comment(s)
Print
E-mail China.org.cn, February 1, 2012
 |
|
A family watch TV gala when making dumplings. |
The family gathered in front of the living room TV to watch the gala and around bowls of fillings to hand-wrap hundreds of jiaozi – dumplings – to eat at midnight (jiaozi is homophonous to "change of year"). Despite having plenty of room, everyone sat elbow-to-elbow and talked and laughed. It began to overlap for me a scene I almost had forgotten, of a time when I also had not the faintest ideas behind most of the holiday customs. Then, I had not the grown-up duties and could run circles around the adults and misbehave with my cousins.
When it came time for the Near Year countdown, though, everyone quieted down and counted along with the TV. As soon as the hosts announced the arrival of the new spring, the young ran ahead the old with baskets of firecrackers and fireworks for the joyous drumming on the ground and wondrous splashes in the sky.
Finally coming inside, steamy plates of jiaozi awaited on the tables, and someone would bite into a coin and shout with delight rather than frustration, as the lottery dumpling forecasts outstanding fortune for the lucky winner's coming year.
Sleeping in was not an option on the first day of the Lunar New Year, not with the eve's excitement hanging in the air or dozens of calls and text messages buzzing in. They brought greetings from far-away relatives and extended families, and I remembered it was the sharing of joy – not archaic rituals – that strengthened Chinese people's most valued bond, and made Lunar New Year their favorite holiday.
I regretted my decision to return early from my holiday vacation to beat the travelling rush at the end of the week-long break. Still, both in Shenyang and back in Beijing, I was astounded by the emptiness of the streets, as people who most days would be holding up traffic stayed within the warmth of their kin. Perhaps this was a fitting reminder that, in the end, all those years away had indeed turned me into a stranger.
Outside the closed curtains of my Beijing apartment, the same firecrackers were thundering away, but they somehow sounded more ominous with the interspersing flashes of fireworks that together impress more of a city under fire than one celebrating new fortune.
But I have rediscovered the key ingredient that could turn this all around. Opening the curtains, I took a video of a magnificent blossoming of light meters away from my window, and sent it to my parents across the Pacific.
Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)