In fact, I look forward to the Spring Festival as much as the children, but I don't count my fingers like they do. It's only a few days before the first day of the first month. Chinese New Year can have a long holiday, enough time to stay with my mother, and I can eat mustard meat steamed by my mother for every meal, which I never eat outside. I am not afraid that my meat will grow day and night in those days. Whenever we frequently hold chopsticks to the steaming and fragrant mustard meat, I can see the happiness and satisfaction on my mother's face from the arc drawn by chopsticks.
Mom is in a panic. Every year, since the 24th of the twelfth lunar month, she has been busy scrubbing all the utensils that can hold food without touching the ground in the biting cold yard. When she saw us, she smiled and took off her wool hat to show us the sweat on her head. On the 25th of the twelfth lunar month, she began to set out to steam steamed buns and steamed jujube hill bean buns. We complained bitterly that she was asking for trouble. Just order some steamed bread on the street. What's the smell of the steamed bread she said she bought?
On the 28th of the twelfth lunar month, no matter how busy we are, we sisters will take time to go home. On that day, we will have cook the meat fried meatballs and fried hemp leaves. Although I have been out of the countryside for a long time, my mother still keeps the habit of being in her hometown, and likes to fry the New Year's goods in cook the meat. For this reason, she always began to collect sticks and branches in summer and waited for the fire during the New Year. Only she can master the cooking temperature of the earth pot when frying all kinds of new year's goods.
I should also take time off to see it on the 30 th of the year. My mother, who has been tired for a few days, looks at all kinds of new year's goods and urges her to eat and eat. When you are full, you will go back to your home to watch your birthday. Every year, the farewell of mother and daughter on this day has a special taste in your heart, because a daughter who marries according to the rules can't watch her birthday at home until the second day of the first month of next year. And this other mother and daughter feel as distant and long as the mountains and waters, but it actually takes only two days. Walking on the small road in front of my house that I have walked countless times, my back is printed with warmth and concern. I walked very slowly but never looked back. I dragged this warmth and concern for a long time.
Firecrackers are coming and going from far and near, the air is full of attractive fragrance, and the Spring Festival couplets just posted by people on the roadside are blown by the wind. The carriage of the bus is empty, the car is driving very fast in the street with few pedestrians, and the driver is also anxious to go home for the New Year. At home, his mother is also looking around the window waiting for him to go home for the new year. When I got off the bus, I loudly said to the driver, "Happy New Year!"
The New Year has really come in our expectation.
Looking forward to the new year
Chinese New Year is a feeling, an experience, an encounter, and perhaps a realm.
The best experience left in my memory is the day when I spent the New Year at my grandma's house in rural Henan province in primary school. At that time, every Chinese New Year was the most exciting event in life. Early, just entering winter, before the winter vacation, I was already looking forward to the New Year. Because, a new year means that adults and children are all on holiday, and they don't work without going to work, school and school. All people can rest and have fun at home. Of course, I know now that it's just a misunderstanding of life by children, but I still like this misunderstanding very much.
The first pleasure of Chinese New Year is that there are many people. I remember one year on the third day of New Year's Eve, friends and relatives came to visit me just after breakfast, and until eight or nine o'clock in the evening, the guests were still in an endless stream. Two aunts, three aunts, uncles, aunts, uncles, cousins, cousins, it seems that all the relatives in the world gathered together on this day. At noon, at least 10 tables were set, and the five caves in Grandma's house were full of people, which was a bit crowded. To my pride, I played shuttlecock with all the children in the yard and beat the invincible hand.
Needless to say, the second pleasure of Chinese New Year is eating. Grandma churned out the red dates, peanuts, dried sweet potatoes and persimmons that had been collected for many days, while Grandpa lifted the lid of the big bamboo basket that had been covered with a thick layer of snow in the corner of the yard, revealing the baked persimmons that were frozen bright red and soft to melt. Not to mention the lunch meal, which put together all the food for a lifetime, including white flour steamed buns, fried oil angle, vegetarian meatballs, beef meatballs, chicken meatballs, braised pork, crispy pork, and crystal sugar lotus lily soup and so on. At that time, adults and children were too careless to be polite, and a plate of food was robbed of three bites. Because everyone's stomach is empty, they can't even eat cornmeal cakes on normal days. Therefore, when it comes to eating enough, no one cares about face.
The third good thing in the Spring Festival is what every child hopes for, and that is the lucky money. But in those years, people were poorer than each other. I still remember clearly that one year the production team gave each family 50 cents, saying that they would buy salt for the New Year. Therefore, although there are many guests, there are only a handful of people who can really give me lucky money. My second aunt usually gives me 20 cents, and my third aunt gives me 50 cents, which is often the most of all relatives. Most others give five cents or ten cents, and more people can't get a penny. Even so, I will receive nearly two yuan after a year, which is already a great fortune.
For me, there is another unique pleasure in Chinese New Year, that is, setting off firecrackers. It's nothing rare to set off firecrackers. Who hasn't let go of kicking and thundering? My pleasure lies in playing with guns. It's a small firecracker made of some gunpowder and flint on two or three layers of paper rolls. Hold it in your fingertips, aim it at the ground with one end and throw it hard. It can scare others at any time with a bang. In grandma's village, there is a family of three brothers who all make and sell cannons. At that time, my family lived in Shenyang, a distant northeast city. Whenever I return to Shenyang from my hometown after the New Year, I will tell my neighbors, children and classmates at school all the fun and mystery of smashing guns. Sometimes I will tell them about the experience of tying birds with baskets or tying lanterns with bamboo sticks in the snow. They are all unheard of and greedy.
One day, my father stood on the top of a high cliff and called me, it's time to start school. Let's go back to Shenyang tomorrow. I just sat there and cried in front of a large group of children.
Later, with many different life experiences, there were many different life situations or experiences about the New Year.
In the early 1970s, I went to the countryside with my parents to "take the May 7th Road" and spent the New Year in the Mi Chang Brigade of Dongga Commune in Changtu County, Liaoning Province. The main features of Chinese New Year there are eating sticky bean buns, stewed vermicelli with sauerkraut and, of course, jiaozi with pork and sauerkraut stuffing. Young people play poker and gamble when they have nothing to do at night. The bet is cigarettes or dried tofu (that is, thousands). From dark to dawn, when you are hungry, eat the dried tofu first, and whoever loses in the end will pay for it. If it's a gambling cigarette, then by dawn, the cigarette has either been absorbed or turned upside down into an empty paper tube. Whether it's cigarettes or dried tofu, you don't care about winning or losing, you just care about having fun. At that time, the Chinese New Year was accompanied by firecrackers, but in a foreign land, I didn't know when to return home, and I had some faint worries.
In those years when I went to the countryside, I returned to Shenyang one year and went to the family hospital where I used to live for the New Year. That night, it was agreed to live at Uncle Han's house (after our family went to the countryside, Uncle Han moved from the original house to the larger house that belonged to our family), but at five or six o'clock in the evening, Uncle Han suddenly said that his relatives had come to a place where I didn't sleep. Although I am seventeen or eighteen years old, I have no social experience and feel cold all at once. I went to uncle Wang's house next door to say goodbye. Uncle Wang is an administrative cadre. He doesn't have much contact with our family at ordinary times, but he kept me. I ate jiaozi at that dinner, and I also ate Hericium erinaceus, a rare delicacy that I had heard about for the first time. Although I slept on the floor at night, I slept very warmly.
Now, I seem to be afraid of Chinese New Year. One reason is that the Chinese New Year means that you are one year older, and the plain days somehow slip away. The more important reason is that the Spring Festival has gradually lost its interest and charm: both urban civilization and modern civilization refuse to visit, even those who live in a family courtyard are not interested in visiting; In addition, many cities have a ban on setting off firecrackers, so the Chinese New Year is only meaningful on the calendar. So, young people simply went to Christmas, Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day. As a result, the China tradition of China culture, which takes festivals as the link, dried up like the Yellow River.
Chinese New Year is an emotional cohesion, an emotional fusion, a spiritual recognition and a continuation of blood. Therefore, I really hope to find back those childhood feelings: curling smoke, noisy crowds, gathering of relatives and friends, enthusiastic firecrackers, and various customs with thousands of years of history ...
I'm looking forward to the feeling of New Year in China.