It’s here again, the Spring Festival, China’s celebration of the lunar new year and the change from one animal’s time in the zodiac to the next. This year we move from the Year of the Rat to the Year of the Ox.
Previous New Year’s blog posts:
- Chinese New Year 2015 – The Year of the Goat
- Finally a week off! (Spring Festival 2018: The Year of the Dog)
- Spring Festival 2019: The Year of the Pig
- Chinese New Year 2020: The Year of Rat
There are a few things that happen this time of year:
- Return home (if you’re far away)
- You make and eat jiaozi (Chinese dumplings), especially on New Year’s Eve
- Watch the CCTV Spring Festival Gala
- Visit relatives
- Give out or receive red envelopes (红包🧧, hong bao, and make sure the bills are crisp and new), though these are now being replaced by digital versions.
- Hang up new pieces of paper on their doors, including the Spring festival couplets (春联, chun lian) and luck (福, fu).
- Sing or wish people prosperity in the new by saying gong xi fa cai (恭喜发财).
- Visit a Temple Fair (描绘, miao hui), but this year (2021) they are cancelled.
- Set off fireworks (common outside of the big cities but now being discouraged because kids are shoving them down sewer drains and… kaboom.)
Those are the basics of what goes on in just about every house. Some additional things to be aware of during the Spring Festival:
- Don’t cut your hair
- Don’t sweep or clean anything up (around the house)
- Don’t wash your hair
- Don’t throw anything out
- Don’t be in debt.
This is why you’ll see all of your Chinese friends get their hair cut in the weeks leading up to Spring Festival and then, subsequently, they won’t wash for weeks afterwards. I also guess that Spring Festival is very similar to the “Spring cleaning” that goes on in the West in that people find the time to clean out some of the stuff that’s accumulated over the year or over the winter.
Oh, and don’t forget to wish people Happy Spring Festival on WeChat so you can see the cute oxes walk across the screen:
There is a certain order to the days of the holiday season, including ChuXi (the day the Nian monster arrives and needs to be scared away by fireworks); ChunJie (the actual day of Spring Festival); Po Wu (the “break five” day wherein people welcome the door gods and eat jiaozi again); and then the fifteenth day is another big day that people commonly celebrate as Lantern Festival. That’s the day when they let lanterns fly up into the air. This used to be done with candles but is now done with lights instead so they aren’t as dangerous.
Spring Festival always marks a remarkable change in weather (which is probably why it’s called such) because, within a month or so after, the weather turns for the better and you can start to see flowers begin to bloom, notably the sakura, or cherry blossoms. It’s also a time when Chinese farmers start preparing for the next planting season.
So what did I do this year?
Ha, well, in proper old man fashion, I made and eat jiaozi early in the evening, had a few beers, and then fell asleep at ten thirty or eleven. Didn’t even make it to midnight! That’s the second New Year’s this year that that’s happened! (If I count Ukrainian malanka, then it would be three for three.)
The city has grown quiet as people returned home. There is a bit of concern that there might be another outbreak which, if it happens, people get locked down wherever they are. That didn’t seem to stop at least some people from returning home for the holiday.
Our work is on hiatus for a week but we will resume promptly at the end of the holiday. January was a rather quiet month so this holiday is really just an extension of very little work to begin with. If THE VIRUS continues to dissipate around the world, then students will be able to go overseas and that will help our work increase.
Other than that, with no ability to travel and no desire to quarantine or get anally swabbed upon return to China if I did go overseas, it was an easy decision to stay where I am. Overall, for me, this is a pretty normal Spring Festival.
Hope you’re well! Gong xi ni fa cai!