Unforgetable Spring Festival

Unforgettable Spring Festival

The Spring Festival, which is commonly known in the west as Chinese New Year, is the most important festival for the Chinese people and the moment that all family members get together just like Christmas. People who live or work away from home will go home before the Spring Festival. Therefore, it is the busiest time for the transportation systems. Spring festival is my favorite festival because all my family members can get together and that family plays an important role in my life. My family members don't live in the same city, so we can only meet each other on Spring Festival. The most memorable of spring festival for me is the year when I went to Xi'an to visit my grandfather with my mom and dad.

We start preparations for the festival from the last week before New Year. We cleaned the house thoroughly, repaid the debts, cut the hair and bought some new clothes. Doors are decorated with vertical scrolls of characters on red paper which meant to seek good luck and praise nature, this practice stemming from the hanging of peach-wood charms to keep away ghosts and evil spirits. In many families incense is burned, and also in the temples as a mark of respect to ancestors. Besides the Chinese character "fu" (meaning blessing or happiness) was a must that used to put on paper to post normally or upside down. For Chinese the "reversed fu" is homophonic with "fu has come", both being pronounced as "fudaole." What's more, two big red lanterns were raised on both sides of the front door and Red paper-cuttings were seen on window glass and brightly colored New Year paintings with auspicious meanings were put on the wall. Therefore, we have a lot of preparation to do before the festive come.

People often pay a great attention to the Spring Festival Eve. On New Year’s Eve, our family would prepare a great feast. The meal was more luxurious than usual. Dishes such as chicken, fish and bean curd cannot be excluded. It is because in Chinese, our pronunciations, respectively "ji", "yu" and "doufu," mean auspiciousness, abundance and richness. After helping my mother do the cleaning and prepare for the dinner on the eve of Spring Festival, I finally realized it's really tiring to do housework and I think I got to understand my mother better now. Being a housewife is not as simple as I thought, and from now on, I will help her out as much as I can. After the dinner, we would sit together, do some chatting and watch TV. Every year, the Spring Festival party broadcast on China Central Television Station (CCTV) is supplying entertainment for the Chinese both at home and abroad. I always thought that the TV shows that my parents usually watch are so boring and out of date that I refused to watch with them. However, on the eve of the Spring Festival, I finally realized how important of the TV shows play in our family life. If it was not because of the shows, we wouldn't have the chance to sit around together and share our feelings. Therefore, I try to spend more time with them whom I love the most and I feel like I am getting to understand them better.

According to custom, we wouldn’t sleep until 12:00am so that we can stay until the New Year come to make the first wish of the whole year. I didn’t sleep at night and I made a wish that everyone of my families and friends health and happiness.

I remember that we got up early on the first day of New Year and everybody dressed beautiful. The first thing I did was to extend greetings to my parents. Then, we ate jiaozi, and dumplings, for breakfast, as we think "jiaozi" in sound means "bidding farewell to the old and ushering in the new". Also, the shape of the dumpling is like gold ingot from ancient China. We ate them and wished for money and treasure. After having breakfast at home, we went to visit friends and relatives with some nice gifts. We said “Happy New Year!” or “Good luck this year!” to everyone. Elder generations