Chinese New Year, another name for the holiday, marks the beginning of the lunar year that governed life in ancient China. Although China has now stepped into the modern world, this traditional holiday remains the most important in Chinese culture. Street stands and major shopping malls sell fireworks to be lit during the holiday, all sorts of red envelopes, or hongbao, to be filled with cash, and banners marked with traditional New Year’s greetings to be pasted on front doors. Chinese New Year also motivates the largest annual human migration across the globe, as people travel far and wide to reach their laojia, or hometown, to celebrate with relatives.
However, in a representation of Chinese culture’s warm and welcoming nature, Chinese New Year is also a time to expand the definition of family. For volunteer host families, that means inviting foreign exchange students into their homes and traditions for the duration of the festival. Thus, they offer students like me the unparalleled opportunity to experience firsthand the traditions of China’s most valued time of the year. The timing of the Spring Festival ended up being a major determinant of my decision to spend the spring semester in Beijing, rather than the fall. Needless to say I had high expectations; celebrating with a host family more than surpassed them.
A host of traditions stem from Chinese New Year, many of which revolve around food. Led by our host family, another exchange student and I learned to make dumplings and steamed bread. Our role in the process, though fun, proved less interesting than watching my host mother’s capable hands twisting the dough into perfect flower-shaped rolls and dumplings. Where our dumplings overflowed and looked as though a 4-year-old child might have pinched them together, our host mother’s dumplings looked better than most restaurant dumplings. She had been making dumplings since childhood, with her own grandparents. Though the West has adopted dumpling making as a way for foreigners interested in Chinese culture to celebrate Chinese New Year, my host mother showed us just how much the practice stems out of a century-old tradition.
Though it may not seem like it, Chinese New Year also revolves around activities unrelated to food. As the dumplings and steamed bread cooked, our host father brought us outside, where we set off fireworks wherever we pleased in the middle of a street, amid the roaring background noise of hundreds of others setting off fireworks in the neighborhood. During the Chinese New Year, firecrackers become kings, forcing both pedestrians and cars to yield to them. Ranging from firecrackers that create more smoke than sparks, to full-on fireworks that light up the sky hundreds of feet above the roads, they may be set off by anyone from children to senior citizens. What might be mistaken in the United States for a war zone is ultimately just an expression of the joy and celebration that every Chinese citizen shares during the Spring Festival.
As we set off fireworks, our host mother continued cooking and preparing our countless dishes. When we returned to the apartment, her relaxed demeanor struck me. A dinner party of the caliber of Chinese New Year would most likely be a cause of stress to the family member responsible for cooking it in the United States. But my host mother had not a worry in the world as she splashed and sprinkled ingredients over three hot pans. "Why allow cooking to cause stress when I have my entire family around me?" she asked me. I realized that, despite the importance of food to the holiday, it does not hold the same gravity as a Christmas or Thanksgiving meal would in the United States; it is merely an excuse to bring a family together.
Later, at dinner, no one spoke of how good the meal was, as they served themselves from communal bowls. Everything about our celebrations served as a reminder of the importance of community in China—a community that I am now lucky enough to be considered part of.