The article is structured in terms of time and people's activities. The author first introduces the Spring Festival in Beijing, which starts at the beginning of the lunar month, when people make congee, pickle garlic, buy New Year's goods, and make full preparations for the Spring Festival. Then describes in detail the three climaxes of the Spring Festival: New Year's Eve lights all night, firecrackers, eat New Year's Eve dinner, the whole family together; the first day of the men go out to pay homage to New Year's Eve, the women at home to receive guests, the children to visit the temple fair; the fifteenth to watch the lanterns, firecrackers, eat lanterns. Finally write the end of the Spring Festival on the nineteenth day of the first month.
The article depicts a picture of the Spring Festival in old Beijing, showing the grandeur and bustle of the Spring Festival and the warmth and beauty of Chinese festivals, while comparing the Spring Festival in the old and new societies, highlighting the fact that the new society has changed its customs and customs, and that the Spring Festival has been a joyful and healthy one, which expresses the author's praise for the new China and the new society. The whole text is full of the simple language of Beijing flavor, the statement is simple and natural, without carving, fluent and expressive, and has a strong expressive and infectious power.
Excerpts from the Spring Festival in Beijing:
On the day of Laha, we also make Laha garlic. The garlic cloves are put into high vinegar on this day and sealed up for eating dumplings in the New Year. By the end of the year, the garlic soaked color like emerald, and the vinegar also has some spicy flavor, color and taste double beautiful, so that people want to eat a few more dumplings. In Beijing, every family eats dumplings on New Year's Day.
From the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, shoppers have been stepping up their New Year's goods, and the streets have been filled with stalls selling spring scrolls, New Year's paintings, honey offerings, and daffodils, all of which are only available during this season. These New Year's stalls make children's hearts beat a little faster. In the hutongs, the voices of the yellers are also more numerous and sophisticated than usual, and among them are those that appear only in the month of Lunar New Year, such as those selling gendarmes, pine branches, barley, rice cakes, and so on.
When there was an emperor, schoolchildren stopped going to school on the 19th day of the Lunar New Year and took a January vacation. Almost the first thing the children did to prepare for the New Year was to buy mixed rice. This is a variety of dried fruit (peanuts, jujube, hazelnuts, chestnuts, etc.) and candied fruit and candied fruit mixed 2 and into the ordinary skin, high-level no skin - for example: ordinary with the skin of the hazelnut, high-level with the hazelnut flesh. The children were so fond of these bits and pieces that even if they did not have dumplings to eat, they had to buy a mixture. The second most important thing for them is to buy firecrackers, especially for boys. I'm afraid the third thing is to buy things - kites, firecrackers, harmoniums, etc. - and New Year's paintings The children are busy and the adults are nervous. They must prepare the food and drink for the New Year. They also had to make new shoes and clothes for the children so that they would be able to show the new year in all its splendor.
The 23rd day of the Lunar New Year is almost a "dress rehearsal" for the New Year. In the old society, the night of the family sacrifices Zao Wang, from a dark child firecrackers will sound, with the sound of firecrackers to Zao Wang's paper like incineration, the beautiful name called Zao Wang to heaven. In the first few days, the street has more or less how many sell maltose and Jiangmi sugar, sugar shape or for the long square or for the size of the melon shape according to the old saying: with the sugar sticky Zaowang's mouth, he went to heaven will not be to the Jade Emperor to report the bad things in the family. Nowadays, there are still candy sellers, but they are only enjoyed by everyone and no longer stick to Zao Wang's mouth.
After the twenty-third, everyone gets busier, and the New Year is here in the blink of an eye, ah. Before New Year's Eve, families must put up the Spring Festival couplets and must clean the house for the second time, called sweeping. Must be meat, chicken, fish, vegetables, rice cakes and other things are prepared enough, at least enough to eat a week - according to the old custom, most of the store closed five days, to the sixth day of the first month before opening. If you don't prepare food for the next few days, it's not easy to replenish it temporarily. Also, the old society, the old mother theory, preaching in the New Year's Eve to cut out everything that should be cut out, so as not to be in the first day of the first month of the first five and then move the knife, move the knife cut is unlucky. This contains the meaning of superstition, but it also shows that people do love peace of mind, in the first of a year even cut the vegetable knife are not willing to move a.
New Year's Eve is a busy time. The smell of wine and meat was everywhere. Young and old men and women are dressed in new clothes, red couplets posted outside the door, the house posted a good colorful New Year's paintings, which family lights all night, not interrupted, the sound of artillery day and night. People who work outside, unless absolutely necessary, must rush home to eat a reunion dinner, ancestor worship. On this night, except for very young children, no one sleeps, but to keep the New Year's Eve.
New Year's Day is very different from New Year's Eve: New Year's Eve, the streets are crowded with people; New Year's Day, the store is on the board, in front of the door piled up last night's firecracker paper, the whole city is resting men in the midday before the mobilization of the relatives and friends to go to pay tribute to New Year's. Women are at home to receive guests. Women receive guests at home. At the same time, inside and outside the city there are many temples open for people to visit, vendors set up stalls outside the temple, selling tea, food and all kinds of play. The Dazhong Temple outside the north city, the Baiyunguan Temple outside the west city, and the Fire God Temple (Fangdian) in the south city were the most famous. However, the first two or three days of the opening of the temple, and not very lively, because people are still busy with each other to celebrate the New Year, no time for this. By the fifth or sixth day of the Lunar New Year, the temple fair began to take off, and children were especially eager to go there in order to see the wild scenery outside the city, ride donkeys, and buy those New Year's special toys. Baiyun Guan outside the square of the race car racing; in the elderly, it is said that there are camel races. These races do not strive to see who comes first and who comes second, but rather to perform before an audience the wonderful gestures and skills of the mules and horses and their riders.
Lao She (1899-1966), formerly known as Shu Qingchun (舒慶春), was a native of the Manchu Zhenghong Banner (满族正红旗). He was born in 1899 to a poor family in Xiao Yang Jia Hutong in the western part of Beijing. His father, Shu Yongshou, was a military guard who defended the Imperial City during the Qing Dynasty and was killed in action against the Eight-Power Allied Forces in 1900. His mother, Ma, was illiterate, and after her husband's death, she worked as a handyman to support the family.
Lao She graduated from the Beijing Normal School in 1918 because he couldn't afford to pay the tuition fee in 1913, and in 1922 he was appointed as a teacher of Chinese language at the Nankai School, and in 1924 he went to the Oriental Institute of the University of London as a lecturer of Chinese language.
He wrote many books in his life, and his main masterpieces include Divorce, Camel Xiangzi, Broken Souls and Guns, The Crescent Moon, My Whole Life, The House of the Four Worlds, Under the Positively Red Flag, The Teahouse, Longshougou, The Remnant of the Mist, The Pearls of the Fang, and Spring and Autumn, and so on.
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