How the Chinese Celebrate the Spring Festival

The Chinese Lunar New Year is also known as Spring Festival.

The Chinese Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival, that begins today, is the most important traditional festival of China. To celebrate this festival, the Chinese, no matter how much the distance and how exhausting the travel, make it a point to return home for a family reunion. It’s almost as it coming home for the Spring Festival is like a pilgrimage.

In recent years, newer ways of celebrating the festival have emerged. People ask family members in their hometowns to reunite with them in the cities where they work. Others choose to stay in cities or travel elsewhere. However, many stick to tradition — they travel all the way from where they work and live to their hometowns for a family reunion. One such person is Rongrong, who set out for home alongside China Pictorial reporters.

Spring Festival: Destination Home

On January 23, 2019, only 12 days before the Chinese Lunar New Year, Rongrong finished work early and headed out on a trip with her mother, grandmother, cousin and little nephew to their hometown in southeastern China’s Fujian Province. The little boy was rather excited, and the others were all eager except for Rongrong. Born and raised in Beijing, Rongrong considers this ‘hometown’ a place only to be visited during Spring Festival. Her family has lived in Beijing for a long time, and even her grandmother—the oldest in the family—has lived there for several years. Still, whenever Spring Festival approaches, the family always returns to their hometown more than 2,000 kilometers away from Beijing.

Due to the late arrival of their flight, it was nine in the evening when Rongrong’s family landed in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian Province. It took another two hours for them to drive from the Fuzhou Airport to their residence in Dongwu Village, Xiuyu District, in the province’s Putian City. After cleaning the house and unpacking their luggage, they went straight to bed.

“It feels like a real festival here,” said Rongrong’s grandmother. “We have traditions of making red sticky rice dumplings, going on lantern tours and celebrate Chinese New Year’s Eve. This is our family reunion. Everyone should be here.” She feels that it’s a good idea to return to their hometown annually to celebrate the Spring Festival even though the entire family now lives in Beijing. “After all, this is our home, where our roots are anchored.”

Although 24-year-old Rongrong doesn’t have much memory of living in her hometown, it has been a routine for her to come back for the Spring Festival. “Observing the festival in Beijing involves little more than a big meal, but here it’s totally festive,” Rongrong said. “Most of my relatives still live back home, and many special traditions are only preserved here.”

Weddings and blind dates are often scheduled for the season, alongside visiting relatives and friends. Like many other villages in China, most Dongwu villagers work elsewhere, and only a few are left behind. The natives only return around the Spring Festival. In this case, ceremonial activities are usually organised intensively during the festival. Maintaining social bonds with family members and fellow town people is one reason they come home.

A few days before the arrival of the Spring Festival, Rongrong’s family still had a long to-do list: cleaning, purchase household products, visit relatives, prepare festival specialties and more. As the Chinese New Year draws closer, her relatives will return from across China.

You can follow Rongrong’s celebration of the festival by way of these amazing pictures:

Rongrong and her grandmother prepare danpan (traditional trays used for weddings in southern Fujian) for her aunt’s wedding. Like other rural areas, many people leave the village to work in bigger cities, so ceremonial occasions are mostly celebrated around the Spring Festival when most villagers return from elsewhere. This is one reason that Rongrong’s family returns home every year.(Picture: Chen Jian / China Pictorial)

The day after their return, Rongrong and her mothe rvisit a shopping center in downtown Putian to buy decorations needed for the Spring Festival.  (Picture: Chen Jian / China Pictorial)

While preparing danpan, Rongrong’s grandmother tells her about traditional Putian gift paper-cutting.(Picture: Wang Yuncong /China Pictorial)

After breakfast,Rongrong and her mother buy rice cakes near their home that she often ate as snacks during her childhood. The aroma elicited instant nostalgia.(Picture: Chen Jian / China Pictorial)

Rongrong greets her neighbours while strolling around the village with her grandmother.(Picture: Chen Jian / China Pictorial)

Rongrong cleans an incense burner as her grandmother tells her about the customs of her hometown. (Picture: Chen Jian / China Pictorial)

Considering that Rongrong’s family was gone for nearly a full year, cleaning the house becomes a major task before the Spring Festival.(Picture: Chen Jian / China Pictorial)

While the sun is shining, Rongrong and her grandmother wash danpan that had been stored away.(Picture: Chen Jian / China Pictorial)

Rongrong and her mother visit a famous temple to worship Mazu, the goddess of sea and the guardian of peace. Meizhou Island near Dongwu Village is home to the Ancestral Temple of Mazu and and the cradle of the Mazu culture. Many people from the area worship Goddess Mazu.(Picture: Wang Yuncong /China Pictorial)

Rongrong in her office. After graduating from university, Rongrong was hired as a manager in the planning department of a Beijing household goods company.(Picture: Chen Jian / China Pictorial)

(Text by: Wang Yuncong. This content has been provided by Beijing-based China Pictorial.)