Spring Festival

The past few days I have been visiting various relatives. The eighteenth was Chinese New Year, or otherwise named Spring Festival. It is the biggest festival on the Chinese calendar, the festivities lasting several days. It falls on a different day of the (international) calendar each year because the Chinese holidays are reckoned according to the Chinese lunar calendar.

As an interesting side note, in the Chinese lunar calendar last year there was two Julys(?). My wife, Poppy, has her birthday in that month so, counting her birthday on the international solar calendar and her two birthdays in the two Julys of the Chinese lunar calendar, she had three birthdays last year, which is simply not fair.

Another note concerning the Chinese calendar. Several Chinese people have said to me very smugly that it is no surprise to them that this winter was so terribly warm. They say they knew it would be a warm winter because last year’s lunar calendar had two Julys. They claim that the lunar calendar is more fitting to the weather than the solar one. I don’t know if this claim is true because I still as yet barely understand the lunar calendar.

Anyhow, back to Spring Festival. On Saturday Poppy and I went to her mother’s relative’s house and talked with them for a while. Then we went to her father’s parents’ house and spent the night with them. We ate a huge meal for lunch, consuming so much delicious food that whereas our mouths were delighted with flavor, our bellies were feeling the crunch. After the meal, most of us drove over to Poppy’s grandfather’s brother’s house to visit them. There is a special word in Chinese for going around and visiting the relatives because it is an essential tradition of Spring Festival. After that we returned to Poppy’s grandfather’s house and talked and watched the annual Spring Festival TV program.

This program is probably the most watched television program in the world. I think the Super Bowl is the most watched program in the USA, and maybe less than 50 percent of TV sets in America during that time are playing the Super Bowl. In contrast, in China during the Spring Festival program something like 90 percent of the total TV sets that are on are tuned into this program.

There are lots of people singing and dancing and doing comedy plays in the program. The Chinese navy boys sang and danced. Then, the brave and handsome army guy sang, flanked by two beautiful young army ladies. As you guessed, the air force guys also got to sing and dance. Then they have various Chinese minority people groups sing and do traditional dances. Then the little children with their red neckerchiefs did their song and dance, which was cute. Probably the biggest star of the show this year was Zhao Benshan. He is the number one comedy play guy in China. Usually the middle-aged Zhao does comedy routines on a stage but he also has a TV show. He is attractive to us laobaixing (common folk) because he always plays a common person, dressed in poor cloth and behaving as a good ol’ Northeasterner. The reason he was such a star this year was that he recently put out a full-length movie. Later, I hope to tell you about this movie which all of you in America should see, but never will.

While we were watching the program, we were making the festival food: dumplings. They are meat or vegetable balls wrapped up in a doughy covering. Right before twelve o’clock, some of us went outside to light off some fireworks, which is a must do before eating any meal during the festival. We didn’t do many fireworks this year, just popped off a few crackers and rushed back inside to eat. Most of us were probably still full from lunch, so we didn’t eat too many dumplings. However, tradition says that we have to eat dumplings at midnight, so we all obliged. Finally, everyone went to bed. That was Spring Festival.

My wife and I visited other family members for the next couple days. Now, we are home for just one night. We will go in the morning to visit other family members.

When I have time, I would like to tell you about many things, including
-Regifting: what to do when you don’t know what to do with it.
-Bathrooms: how sometimes you feel you are in a glass house.
-Zhao Benshan’s movie: why I’m surprised the other main character had a name.
-Potentiality: would it still happen if it wasn’t going to happen in the first place?