SPRING FESTIVAL AND ME

Let’s celebrate the start of the year of the Ox, different cultures, and those around us

Christmas and New Year's festivities are in the past, and Easter is still some way away. How do I beat the winter blues you ask... Here's my answer: Chinese New Year!

Growing up in China, the Spring Festival – you might know it as Chinese New Year – was a huge holiday celebrated with extended family and food, food, and then some more food. This year, on 12th February, my family and I will be marking the start of the year of the Ox again, and this time with my French in-laws! I’d like to share with you my personal stories of the festival and invite all of you to take this opportunity to have some fun with me! And if this helps you learn a thing or two about the culture and history behind it, even better.

MY SPRING FESTIVAL

As a child, Spring Festival was always celebrated with my extended families, usually at my grandparents’. Uncles, aunts and cousins would often travel hundreds of miles to come back to visit. On the big family celebration on the Chinese New Year’s Eve, grownups would be busy preparing a ridiculously big meal where everyone would contribute their signature dish – it still makes my mouth water when I think about my mum’s spicy beef and grandma’s egg skin dumpling soup. While the kids would be playing with each other and sneaking into the kitchen to steal a bite of something. As the evening fell, we would make dumplings together – all generations – and eat our way into the night and the new year. It would be a celebration that took weeks to prepare for and fondly talked about months, and even years, later.

Those memories became bitter-weet when I moved to the US for grad school – I missed my big, loud, chaotic, and lovely family a lot particularly on these holidays. But it also gave me the opportunity to learn how Spring Festival is celebrated in other families and countries as I met people from other parts of China and other Asian countries. During that decade of celebrating it with friends instead of family I started my own traditions, mixing and matching my favourite foods and celebrations from different people and places.

Over the past several years, I got married, had a baby, moved to London, but I’ve never missed a Spring Festival celebration, and it's getting increasingly elaborate as my daughter begins to understand and appreciate the traditions and rituals. In our French-Chinese family with my 4-year-old daughter, Spring Festival is now celebrated with stories, food, red dresses, crafts and decorations. Before pandemic, a trip to Chinatown to shop for the big family feast and feeling the festivities was also a must. We are a family that loves holidays and celebrations. At Christmas we have a banquet and a tree adorned with trinkets collected from all over the world. For Epiphany, we enjoy not one but several Galette des Rois. We still mark US Thanksgiving by cooking up a big bird.

My family’s traditions at Spring Festival are one way of keeping those who are far away or no longer with us close by. What we do and what we eat carry elements from my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and many, many more from generations before them. It makes me joyful to think of my daughter celebrating with a small part of them – and me – way into the future. Because for me, life itself is one big celebration of getting to experience this world with the people we love most.

TRADITIONS AND VARIATIONS

In addition to feasting, other well-known traditions are firecrackers and fireworks (legend has it they scare off evil spirits), street parades with lion dances (to bring prosperity and good luck), red envelopes full of money, and returning home to be with family. Before COVID-restrictions, this time of year saw the largest movement of humans in the world.

But, in the same way that Christmas is celebrated differently across Europe, activities around Spring Festival vary by location and by individual families’ traditions. The quintessential food for the new year where I grew up in northern China is dumplings (jiaozi), while in the south it is sticky rice cake (nian gao).

The start of the lunar new year is celebrated in different ways across many other countries. In Vietnam, their lunar new year is called T?t and the people eat bánh ch?ng, a traditional rice cake made from glutinous rice, mung beans, and pork. For the Tibetan New Year (Losar), Buddhist monks and nuns create intricate sculptures out of yak butter and burn butter lamps.

BRINGING SPRING FESTIVAL HOME

Festivals are a great opportunity to explore different cultures and get children curious and excited about the world around them. If you’re interested in learning more about lunar new year or Spring Festival, or want to experience some of the traditions with your family, here are some ideas:

Start with the food! Get together and try making dumplings together, see who can make the prettiest crimps or tastiest fillings. To make life easier, you can buy the round dumpling wrappers online rather than make them from scratch.

Explore the Chinese zodiac. Do you all know the animal for the year of your birth? Ask your family if they think the typical characteristics of that animal apply to you. Younger children may enjoy the story of the Jade Emperor and the Great Race that determined the order of the zodiac cycle.

Have conversations with friends from different cultures to gain a wider perspective. This helps to build empathy and intercultural skills. Do some research of your own around topics other than Spring Festival that may be on people’s minds, for example the growth in hate crimes against east and south-east Asian people in the past year.

Tell your own story. Share an experience, for example the first time you visited China or somewhere in east Asia. How did you feel? What did it mean to you? How was it different to what you were used to, and how was it the same. Most importantly: What did you eat?

Celebrate virtually. The Royal Museums Greenwich are streaming a whole host of Spring Festival events on their Facebook page, including a signed version of the Legend of Nian and speakers from the Newham Chinese Association. Over in the US, the ‘art doctors’ at the Smithsonian will be holding a free virtual workshop about oxen in art with the opportunity for children to make their own ox artwork at home.

FINAL THOUGHT

With it still being so cold outside and the nights so long, there is little excuse not to try and beat the winter blues with a holiday celebration! Whether you want to read a story about Spring Festival to your children, join a virtual event, or just need an excuse to order an extra special Chinese takeout – use the opportunity to learn and celebrate in your own way!

Author’s Note: For another view of Spring Festival, please read this blog from my colleague Jason Ekberg, who is based in China: Lunar New Year and Me. As well as sharing his experiences, he provides tips on how to use Spring Festival to explore different cultures and get children curious and excited about the world around them.