Memories of Chinese New Year
I CANNOT forget the brilliant red of the ‘heavenly bamboo’ and the pale yellow of the ’winter plums.’ I do not know why the two must be put into one vase, but it always has been so — the bright red berries against the delicate yellow flowers. The sight of these two good friends alone spells New Year in capital letters, but there are the ‘water fairies’ in every room, dainty whitepetaled golden-hearted flowers whose long slender stems are specially dressed in red paper circlets and whose sweet scent is so like a gentle smile.
It is New Year’s Eve. The Big Hall is receiving the last touches in preparation that has lasted for two weeks. Scrolls of painting and calligraphy are symmetrically arranged on the walls and carefully kept in place by fine red strings. In the middle of the centre wall hangs the scroll of Longevity and Happiness. The Old Man with the bulging forehead seems to smile even more benignly than usual amid his familiar surroundings, the pine tree, the crane, and the fairy peaches. On either side of him we find the same wish for peace and happiness expressed in poetic words and flowing writing. Directly below him stands the long ritual table resplendent with offerings. The two tall pewter candlesticks, massive and majestic, seem to us haughtier than ever bearing on their heads huge red candles decorated with designs and characters in gold. But the fat incense burner is holding his own, as he stands in the middle. Behind these three stand a long row of tall pewter dishes filled with pyramids of fruit, nuts, cakes, and all the New Year edibles. All the tables wear skirts and all the chairs covers of red satin elaborately embroidered with silk and gold. The candles are lit. The incense burns. Firecrackers burst in the air, and so do our young hearts.
Bedtime comes, but no one is interested in seeing you properly in bed. Everybody is so busy. All the lights are ablaze. Grandmother is looking after the numerous red packages that she will give away the next morning and at which the children peep so approvingly. Mother has to sort out everybody’s new gown, new coat, new trousers, new shoes, and new stockings. (One would be utterly beneath contempt if one wore old stockings with new shoes!) All the servants are preparing breakfast for the morrow, lotus seeds, dates, little rice-flour balls, and so forth. Some may be sweeping the floor, for on New Year’s Day floors must never be swept. You keep all your riches that day, together with the dirt. All the gentlemen are away at their ‘account rooms’ because no account, whether private or public, can be carried over to the next year. All night long, people go about the street with little red lanterns to collect all the money due them. If the debtors do not find it ‘convenient’ to oblige one right away, one can quite comfortably settle down, lantern and all, on the doorstep till they do. But alas, how difficult it is to remember the red lanterns when one has three hundred and sixty-four days to forget them!
But if I could stay awake till midnight, just till midnight when the whim-tuns will be steaming hot and so delicious — besides being a symbol of wealth and all that! But I tried to when I was about five. I supported my eyelids with invisible sticks, but I burst out crying just before the savory things arrived and was immediately put to bed. Henceforth, no more ‘riches’ for me, nor to ‘watch the old year go out and the new year come in between the two candles.’ I have to be content with the reassuring proximity of all my new clothes and seek solace in dreams, but not until I have promised Mother to obey her express wish. ‘To-morrow you will be a year older, therefore you must learn to behave better.’
The first thing that greets one’s ear, or rather pierces it, on New Year’s morn is firecrackers, and more firecrackers. Then music, which is best when loudest. You jump out of bed and put on all your new clothes on your old body. When presentable, you pay your respects to the elders with the greeting, ‘Happiness and Wealth.’ When you have repeated ‘Happiness and Wealth’ till you thoroughly believe in it, you may have your breakfast, which certainly makes you happy. Then the gentlemen — and boys too — go to the family temple outside the city to pay their respects to the ancestors. If you are a little girl — well, nice little girls go with their mother and sisters to the little family shrine in the garden; the ancestors are the same!
When the menfolk are back, Grandmother will have finished her toilet. Her pink and white cheeks wrinkle in a happy smile. Not a hair out of place, and a red flower worn at a jaunty angle. She is carried to the Big Hall. Sitting facing south, she receives kowtows from her descendants of three generations, each generation in a row. The younger generation kowtows to the elder, but brothers and sisters and cousins only bow to each other. Little red packages are handed out to each child. The wrapping is not at all important, but the contents are hoarded into little pockets for further use.
Servants come in to kowtow to the masters and mistresses, and one seems to notice that the more polished their decorum and ceremony, the brighter the gleam in their covetous eyes. But everywhere is happiness and everywhere are little red packages.
After the midday meal, which is chiefly noodles (again long life), everyone turns to games. For big and small, New Year gives special sanction to gambling. There are any number of games one can play. Usually we like fast games — not that we want to get rich quick, but rather that the little red packages are burning holes in our pockets! How true that sudden wealth creates recklessness! However, few fortunes are made or lost, and there is much laughter and good will. New Year’s Day is essentially a family day. After an early supper, we are hurried off to bed with: ‘You mustn’t make any noise because it is little Miss Mouse’s wedding night.’
The poor things! If that is the only official day for mouse weddings, who has the heart to keep the light on or to make any noise to delay their ceremony? It was years later when it dawned upon us how urgently the grown-ups need sleep that night, but we always believed in the mouse weddings.
Then follow days and days of merrymaking, visiting relatives, and relatives visiting. In the afternoons the professional Storyteller will come with his hsien-tzu and his pi-pa. He and his partner will sing, take parts, and recite whole novels from memory with dashes of impromptu humor generously thrown in. Everybody sips olive tea, cracks watermelon seeds, and smiles.
When the tenth day of the new year comes around, everybody — except those rash ones who have squandered all their fortune on busted balloons or broken toys — invests in lanterns and fireworks. What a variety of lanterns one can buy! The grown-ups will be buying or making plain ones so that they can paint on them pictures or write on them poetic riddles for their friends to guess. But the children will be lavishly buying horses, rabbits, goldfish, frogs, and three-tailed monsters. When the candles in these lanterns are lighted, there usually is a parade, and much showing off. But the greatest delight is fireworks. You can buy ‘ nine dragons ’ that meteorize through the sky, or ‘gold-bowl moon’ that turns round and round in a bowl before rocketing to the height of the moon, or ‘ground mouse’ that desperately dashes around as if looking for a convenient hole, or a shower of orchids, or a full battle scene complete with guns and soldiers, or even a swarm of bumblebees tormenting a running boy. Every night there is noise, fireworks, occasionally a hurt little hand.
Then there is the Lantern Show in the City Temple. There are crowds and lanterns, and lanterns and crowds. If the time is peaceful and the year prosperous, there will be a ‘dragon lantern’ swung along by scores of men amid music and fireworks. Men become drunk with the joy of living. Their storehouses are filled with the fruits of harvest; the next sowing will not begin for some weeks; how else can men express this gratitude for Heaven’s bounty?
However, after the eighteenth day, the year is no longer brand-new. School once more rules. One condescends to wear old clothes now because the new ones are already old. A ‘yawning’ shoe is nothing to evoke contempt, but is rather a sign of physical prowess. The greatest and the most beloved of festivals has come and gone, leaving both little heads and little pockets quite empty.
WU HSINMIN