As time goes by, some old Spring Festival customs are fading away while new ones emerge. What changes are contents and forms, memories and feelings are still the same?
Tradition Spring Festival shopping usually is in the market.
It’s a tradition for people to shop for the Spring Festival. Cakes and pastries, roasted seeds and nuts, candies, cigarettes, alcohol drinks, tea, meat, couplets, and window paper-cutting are everyday products favored by people living no matter in rural areas or cities.
Now, people buy New Year goods through online shopping.
Online shopping has become the mainstream recently as e-commerce develops. People begin to buy entertainment and tourism products, instead of food only and buy fewer products to ensure freshness.
Spring-cleaning is a traditional custom of China to welcome new and say farewell to the old.
In urban areas, residents frequently clean their houses, indicating the old tradition is dying. The rural environment has also been greatly improved, leaving little space for performing spring-cleaning.
Spring Festival couplets
Spring Festival couplets, a distinctive literary form in China, carry people’s best wishes for the next year. Today, people still paste up a specifically-selected red couplet on both sides of the door to celebrate the festival. But instead of being written out, the Spring Festival couplets are mainly printed.
New Year’s Eve dinner in a restaurant
New Year’s Eve dinner is the highlight of the Spring Festival and the most important meal to Chinese people.
New Year’s Eve dinner at home
But it is also changing over the past few years. “New Year’s Eve dinner is an occasion for a family reunion. Either it is held at a restaurant or home, the most vital thing is that family members get together and be happy.” Mrs. Zhang, living in Xincheng Lidu, Ranjiaba, Yubei District, reserved seats for the New Year’s Eve dinner half a month ago.
Return to the wife’s parental home is another unique custom of China. Traditionally, the married daughter will bring her husband and children to the parents’ house on the second day of the first lunar month. They should take gifts and prepare lucky money.
However, people no longer stick to that rule and will visit the wife’s parents during ordinary days, since the married couple may come from different places.
'Family reunion' is the main theme of the Spring Festival. People working in other places once spared no effort in arriving home before the Lunar New Year’s Eve.
Human development leads to changes in customs. With better living standards and a convenient transportation system, people tend to invite parents to where they work or travel during the holiday.
Lucky money is usually given by the elder to the young, wishing them good luck and security.
Today, mobile payment is popular; therefore, “Internet + Spring Festival,” such as paying lucky money through WeChat, has become a familiar scene.
In traditional Chinese culture, firecrackers were initially used to scare away evil spirits, named Nian, and bore people’s hope for a smooth new year.
To protect the environment, many places in China began to control the production, selling and setting off of fire-crackers. This year, Chongqing will continue to prohibit firecrackers in areas within the Belt Expressway. As a result, electronic fireworks, which create a festival atmosphere without polluting the environment, become popular.
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