Cui Zengqi: Reminiscing about the New Year when I was a child

Cui Zengqi: Reminiscing about the New Year when I was a child Phoenix City Cui Zengqi When people reach a certain age, they often think of interesting things from their childhood. It was a period when they began to understand a little about people...

Phoenix City Cui Zengqi

When people reach a certain age, they often think of interesting things about their childhood. It was a period when they began to understand a little about life, but it was very vague. My childhood must have been in the 1940s, when I lived in Shanghai. Chinese New Year is the happiest day I look forward to in the year. During the school holidays around the New Year, you don’t have to go to school. You don’t have to do winter vacation homework during those days. You don’t have to be forced by your father to hand in a piece of calligraphy every day. All the time can be used for playing, just like a bird released from its cage and can fly freely. Before the Chinese New Year, adults must take us children to the barber shop to have our heads shaved, and to take a bath in the pond to wash away the old filth. At that time, most families did not have bathing facilities, and taking a bath in a public bathhouse was also a pleasure. In that era, people seldom went to the store to buy clothes in their daily life. During the New Year, the family always had to make a new dress. I remember that in winter when I was a child, I still wore a cotton robe with a long shirt outside. It was similar to the cheongsam worn by women today. This kind of clothing was left by the bannermen of the Qing Dynasty. As children grow up quickly, a newly made gown not only reaches the knees but also falls to the feet to ensure that it can last for a year. I couldn’t find a photo of me wearing a robe when I was a kid, so I only found a photo on the Internet of a man wearing a robe back then for everyone to imagine.

The evening of New Year's Eve is the time for the whole family to sit together and have New Year's Eve dinner. My mother always makes a complete feast with ten dishes, one soup and one table, hoping that it will be perfect. A braised ham, an old hen stewed in a casserole, a braised fish symbolizes abundance every year, and a braised lion's head symbolizes reunion. There are also pickled fresh meat, chestnut braised pork, stir-fried shrimp, stir-fried winter bamboo shoots with edamame, grilled pork belly and green vegetables, etc. Before having the New Year's Eve dinner, all the dishes are prepared and placed on the table, several pairs of bowls, chopsticks and wine glasses are placed, red candles and incense burners are lit, and the ancestors are first invited to have a meal. The whole family kneels down one after another, and each person kowtows three times. After the ancestors had a meal, everyone sat down to have the reunion dinner together. After dinner, the children ran to play outside the gate, dug a small hole in the ground, and played marbles. There was no TV at that time, let alone the Spring Festival Gala. The whole family sat together chatting, making glutinous rice dumplings, preparing to eat on the morning of the first day of the new year, and stayed up until the New Year bell rang. The adults and children lit cannon sticks at the door, saying goodbye to the old year and welcoming the new year amidst the sound of firecrackers. After driving away the ghosts and gods, they went back to the house to sleep. When I woke up on the morning of New Year's Day, I would find a few red envelopes under my pillow. My grandma and parents put them under my pillow after I fell asleep. After getting up, I kowtow to the elders and pay New Year greetings, and of course bring them red envelopes. From the first to the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, there are always peanuts, candies and melon seeds in the living room of my house. Relatives, friends and neighbors will come to pay New Year greetings and sit down to say some blessings. I will take the opportunity to run in, kneel down and kowtow, call aunt or uncle, and of course I will receive the red envelope and say thank you. My dad sometimes takes me to the homes of his familiar friends to pay New Year greetings. When I see people, I kneel down to pay New Year greetings. My dad sometimes laughs at me for kowtowing too early. I kowtow before the adults have finished speaking, catching the other person off guard. He knows how anxious the child is. When I got the red envelope, I went to play with it. After a year, the income from red envelopes is still considerable. This money is my little treasury. My parents can’t touch my money, but when they get home, they have to see how much money was given in each red envelope. In order to maintain the exchange of favors, they want to give the money back. It turns out that this red envelope is just a fun trick for the children. We use our own money to rent comic books from the Little Man Bookstore and buy a pack of spiced peanuts, spiced beans or marshmallows, and we feel great satisfaction and enjoyment. Sometimes I buy a few colorful glass marbles and shoot a few missiles into the holes. In the end, I couldn't resist the adults and guided me to use the annual deposit to buy a Venus pen for study. On the morning of the first day of the Lunar New Year, everyone has to eat a small bowl of glutinous rice balls with sugar, also called Shunfeng Yuan, to pray for everything to go well in the new year and for the family to be happy and reunited. Eating noodles at noon brings good luck to a happy family and a long-lasting life. From the first to the third day of junior high school, there is basically no work at home, especially on the first day of the new year. Doing work on this day means that you will be working hard all year round. You cannot sweep the floor and take out the garbage, or even empty the toilet. There are thousands of gold in there, and you are afraid of taking away the gold and silver. Children are not allowed to cry either, maybe it will be the end of the year😢. In short, at the beginning of the new year, there are many rules, and everything is to seek good luck. With the changes of the times, today, people seem to be celebrating the New Year every day. You don’t have to wait for the Chinese New Year to buy new clothes. As long as you like, you can eat as much fish and meat as you like, and eat delicacies from the mountains and seas every day. There are more and more patients with high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and high blood lipids. People joke that some people have become poverty alleviation (bottle) cadres who have been tested by (alcohol) and often attend the expanded meetings of the Standing Committee (gastrointestinal). During the Spring Festival, people no longer reunite at home, but use the holidays to travel domestically and abroad with their families. The interaction between relatives and neighbors has been reduced, and instead, e-greeting cards on the Internet are used to convey mutual friendship. I don’t know since that year, red envelopes have developed into a tool for people to give gifts and give and accept bribes. Technology is developing, society is progressing, and people's lives are becoming richer and richer. But I still have a sweet love and fond memories of the childish fun in my childhood.