Celebration

Chinese New Year follows a lunar calendar.  New Year's Day is usually on a day of February and varies every year. Chinese celebrate New Year's Day during Spring Festival that is the longest national holiday lasting over one week starting from New Year's Eve. Here I would like to speak out some of my personal impressions about Spring Festival.

First is the custom of returning home. Everyone tries his best to go home during the festival no matter how far he is away or how busy he is in the past year. Spaces for train, bus and airplane are fully occupied even with price higher than normal. The heavy transportation in Spring Festival has happened for many years that the related departments treat it as a serious task every year. For my experience, my parents are not very happy when we don't go to meet them during the holiday even they understand that the distance from Canada to China is long.

Second one is the specific food eaten on the New Year’s Day. People in southern part must eat Tangyuan to expect that the family members could unite without living apart in the coming year, while the northern people must eat Jiaozi to welcome a new year and expect wealth in the coming year. And there is implication with other foods. For example fish means more than enough wealth, rabbit means vivid life, and chicken means good luck.

The third one is the Red Envelope, in which money is put. Usually adults prepare  red envelope and give it to children in the Festival. On one hand adults should keep enough red envelops in their pockets so that they could have something to give as they like whenever they encounter a child of friends or relatives, or even of strangers. On the other hand children are full of expectation in the whole holiday to accept red envelops. Children will show their total money to each other in the end of Festival. But often the total money ends in the hands of their parents to be disappeared, though parents have said children are the only owner of the money. I was one of these children who don't know where the money has finally gone.

Spring Festival has been the most important holiday since I was born. I enjoy the foods that we seldom have on a normal day, I look forward to walk in the spring fields with my family, and I feel the joy of the New Year!