[media-credit id=173 align=”alignright” width=”300″][/media-credit]As Chinese New Year approaches, I want to share something about Chinese culture with my friends after spending my first semester adapting to the new environment and breaking through various difficulties. We use the lunar calendar to count the date of traditional holidays in China, so the exact date of Spring Festival varies from year to year, and this year’s Spring Festival is Jan. 31.

According Chinese zodiac, this year will be the year of horse.

In Chinese, we call the Chinese New Year “Chun Jie”, which literally means Spring Festival. Actually, Spring Festival was a totally different holiday before the Revolution of 1911, which was marked as the starting point of modern China.

After, the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, Chinese government changed the name of Chinese New Year into Spring Festival so that people will not get confused by the two New Years in two calendars.

Spring Festival is the most important holiday for the Chinese. In fact, Chinese people value Spring Festival as much as how westerners value Christmas. Even in some prisons, prisoners, guards and the warden celebrate Spring Festival together.

In today’s China, we have eight days of vacation for Spring Festival (including the New Years’ Eve) in which the first four are designated by law.

Traditional Chinese culture emphasizes reunion of the families, so people tend to rush back home during Spring Festival no matter what they do and where they are.

In Chinese main land, we even have a special concept called “Spring Rush”, which is a situation similar to, but way more severe than what happens here in America before Thanksgiving. People start to order bus, train or plane tickets a month earlier than the holiday and people start to actually travel one to three weeks before the holiday.

Take my family as an example. I live with my parents and my father’s parents in Beijing while my mother?s parents live in a city 150 miles away. So we usually spend the New Years? Eve (Chu Xi) and the first few days of the New Year with my father’s parents, visit some relatives, and then spend a couple of days with my mother’s parents and the other relatives.

To most of Chinese people, Chu Xi is the most important day. In Chu Xi, one of the most important events for us is sitting by the table with a big family and enjoying a big dinner prepared by the whole family, although some people are getting lazy and started to eat in the restaurants.

During the afternoon of Chu Xi, My whole family of eight would gather together and prepare the dinner. In some years, I was even the ‘head chef’ with grandma giving me advices. There are a lot of traditional dishes that have to appear on the dinner table at that night. The specific dishes depend on different regions, cultures and personal preferences. Here are some “necessities” for our family.

The seedling of green bean or soybean is the sign of good luck because they look like a traditional Chinese symbol called Ru Yi, which means “as you wish.” And the stir frying canola is usually served with the seedling because it looks like another ancient symbol that represents happiness. It?s called “An Le.”

Fish is also required, because in Chinese, the word “fish” and the word “surplus” sounds the same, so eating fish indicates our wish of getting more than we need in the next year. In addition, we are not supposed to finish the fish because of the wish of “surplus.”

Lastly, the most important Spring Festival food in the entire northern China is called “Jiao Zi,” or dumplings. We make hundreds of them for the big dinner. Besides the usual stuffing, we make a few of them with sweet red bean paste and coins, and we wish the people who happen to eat them will have good luck for the next year. And that’s why my cousins and I tried so hard to find the “luck” by looking for the slight difference on the surface of dumplings.

Firework is another necessity for Spring Festival and it’s also my favorite since I was a kid. Strangely, I especially like those cheap firecrackers instead of those expensive, ginormous and fancy fireworks for display. It’s because there are so many ways to play firecrackers but after you lit a firework, all you can do is watch. And, the person who lights up the firework always has the worst view. No exceptions.

For adults, there is a tradition of giving kids lucky money, which is the major source of income for me in the whole year.

There are too many interesting traditions about Spring Festival that I swear I can write a whole book about it just base on my own experience and the stories from my parents and grandparents. But what I can write in the article is limited.

So, if you have interest in Spring Festival, you are welcomed to ask your Chinese friends as well as your Korean friends and Vietnamese friends as they celebrate that holiday in their country, too.

And, this year’s Spring Festival experience is going to be a little bit different for me as I am six thousand miles away from home. But, fortunately, my Chinese Church is organizing a celebration on February. 8. Also, I will celebrate Chu Xi with my fellow international student Tom and his mother after the basketball game on Friday.

In addition, I encourage readers to attend the Chinese New Year Parade and Festival in downtown Fresno on March 1, starting at 10 a.m.

For more opinions, read the Jan. 23 article, La Historia de un Viajero.