Spring Festival

The most important holiday in China is the Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year. Since Chinese people still use the lunar calendar, the first day of the new year changes. This year, it's on January 26th. The Spring Festival period begins on the eve of the New Year's Day and ends 15 days later on the Lantern Festival.

The importance of celebrating this time with your family cannot be overstated. Sometimes, it is the only time of the year when families reunite. This is the peak travel period every year and it looks as if the entire nation is on the move. The rush began this year on January 11 and will last until the end of February to see everyone home from their visits to their hometowns.

Trains are the most popular way to travel here and there will be an estimated 188 million people using them during the holidays. The numbers of people moving through the big train stations on a daily basis are staggering. I've been mesmerized by the shots of the masses at the stations on the nightly news. I am thankful that we are traveling by plane so I don't have to be in the thick of those crowds, pushing and shoving and trying to hang on to my belongings.

The preparations leading up to the New Year include cleaning the house, repaying debts, getting your hair cut and buying new clothes. Going shopping at this time of year is great cause everything is on sale. The house is also decorated with festive decorations. The stores have been filled with lots of red and gold decorations to choose from. They also have lots of cartoon images of cows this year because it's the year of the ox. In many homes and temples, people will burn incense to pay respect to ancestors and to ask the gods for good health in the coming year.

On New Year's Eve, families will get together to feast. It's probably the only time in China when there are no traffic jams or crowds. That's the really great part that Don and I are looking forward to when we are home in Ottawa. My family's tradition is centered around food, and lots of it. Here in northern China, the tradition is to eat jiaozi, a dumpling. In the south, we eat a sticky sweet glutinous rice pudding called nian gao... at least, that's what this book I'm reading says. I really don't remember. Sadly, I never really paid too much notice to the traditions before and just ate every thing that was put in front of me.

The other big tradition that everyone has been telling us about is how every family will watch the same New Year's Gala on CCTV, the national television channel. A typical New Year's Eve scenario would be to have your entire family (maybe 3-generations) gathered in front of the TV set while making dumplings for the first New Year's meal. It is such a tradition in Mainland China that there is an estimated audience of over 700 million people. I hope that my parents will get that show in Ottawa. I can ask my Mom to translate :)

Don and I started packing today. We will definitely need to pack some comfy pants to accommodate the New Year's feast!