The Spring Festival is more tiring than work, and workers want to go to work

Wen Dingjiao, Bruce, Xiangyuan, Xingxing, reminiscence.

Edit |Bruce.

From a small family wandering away, back to everyone who gave birth to them, young people can be said to love and fear. What I love is that the Spring Festival every year is an opportunity to reunite with family and childhood friends, and the more you grow up, the less chance you have to go home, so you naturally cherish it very much; What I'm afraid of is that every time I go home, I am very happy at first, but within a few days, the contradictions begin to appear, and I am more tired than going to work.

On the one hand, this tiredness comes from the close schedule and dinner socialization, such as the Spring Festival encounter a blizzard, and the road is late, for fear of delaying the important gatherings that have been arranged; After arriving home, you have to drive back and forth or walk the mountain road to visit various relatives' houses to visit the New Year; Some people follow their families to a foreign land for the New Year after marriage, and the complicated relationship between relatives is overwhelming.

On the other hand, various accidents have also increased the burden of migrant workers for the holidays, such as taking children to scenic spots with relatives to play, only to suddenly find that the children are missing; Some people crossed the city to celebrate the New Year with friends, and almost got carbon monoxide poisoning by burning charcoal for heating at home.

It is more tiring because young people are repeatedly urged to marry and give birth during the Spring Festival party, and they are compared with their peers in their hometowns for jobs and annual salaries, and they feel that they are incompatible with the relationship network and discourse system of their hometown.

Five migrant workers told Dingjiao that during the Spring Festival holiday in the Year of the Dragon, they seemed to have experienced a "big test", and their feelings were also very complicated. They want to go home for the New Year and spend time with their parents, but they also want to stay in a rental house or travel outside to spend the New Year comfortably and relieve their fatigue.

With the end of the holiday, the migrant workers who have not yet rested are about to set off again and transfer themselves back to the rhythm of work and life in the big city as soon as possible. The new year has begun, have the workers charged themselves?

The new daughter-in-law's "New Year is like a big test, which not only tests physical strength but also emotional intelligence31 years old, Beijing.

This year's Spring Festival is the first year after my marriage with my family to go home for the New Year, because his family to my house needs to change trains, the time is very long, and the delay in getting tickets, so the day before Chinese New Year's Eve, we temporarily decided to spend the Spring Festival only at his house this year.

My mom understood our choice, and then sent me a separate message, telling me to pay attention to safety, etiquette, words and deeds when I was outside, and follow the other party's rules where the customs are different. So from the very beginning, I was mentally prepared to understand that this was a big test for a "new daughter-in-law".

On Chinese New Year's Eve, we need to go back to our hometown and "go to the grave". Before leaving, my family reminded me that the roads in the mountains were slippery and that it was easy to move in sneakers and pants. The snow had not yet melted and the steep mountain road was frozen, so we pulled the ropes tied between the trees to prevent us from falling, and at the same time carried incense and candles up the mountain to prepare for worship.

Because the family no longer has a house in the countryside, they have to rush back to the city overnight after eating with the big family in the evening, and come back the next day (the first day of the new year) to pay New Year's greetings.

Their local custom is that between brothers, the eldest brother, second brother, third brother, etc., the house is lower than the family, and the younger generations in a family must climb to the high place first and go to their relatives' houses to visit the New Year one by one according to their seniority. After the worship of the family, go to the relatives and friends of the same surname in the village to continue to pay New Year's greetings from high to low. That day, I walked more than 20,000 steps.

It is a common sight that a group of mighty people have to walk back and forth several times on a mountain road, and a wave of people has not washed the teacup at home. On the way, sometimes two teams of people give way to the side of the road to say "Happy New Year", but they don't actually know each other.

Compared with the physical work of walking, eating and banqueting are more difficult. There is a large and close-knit family on both sides of the family's parents, and a large family dinner and a small individual dinner are arranged during the Spring Festival, and each meal has a game and every game must be "integrated".

At a large dinner, men sit at one table and drink, and the family members must drink more, while I have to be questioned by the elders at the other table, "Can you still adapt to the taste of the food?", "When will you have children?", "How about the income from working outside"...A meal can often be eaten for five or six hours, and it is smoky, so you can't bow your head to play with your mobile phone, and you have to take the initiative to find a topic to prevent embarrassment when you can't understand the dialect. In fact, I am not very accustomed to the local diet of heavy salt and carbohydrates, and after a few meals, I have already accumulated some food.

Small dinners involve in-depth participation, listening to relatives tell interesting stories about the family when they were young, how deep the friendship between the two families is, as well as the history of the whole family, family style, and the excellent children of each family. When the love is strong, not only to drink but also to toast and express the feelings of integration, after working outside for so many years, I have never tested my double business so much.

In the constant repetition, repetition, repetition, I finally couldn't resist it, and began to say that I was unwell and could only drink drinks, and began to eat stomach digesting tablets. On the last night before the return trip, after my last meal, I secretly breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that I had finally finished the exam.

However, I know very well that what I have experienced during this year's Spring Festival is also what my family will experience when they return to my home during the Spring Festival next year. We have our own homes working hard outside, and we still have big families that we can't part with when we return to our hometowns, all we can do is to cooperate well and complete the exam. In contrast, the exams at home are not too difficult, after all, there are more challenges to face when returning to the city where I work.

The train was delayed, the child was almost lost, and the runaway vacation was finally over30+ Beijing.

From the third day of the holiday, I was eager to go back to work. My "New Year's phobia" comes from having too many things out of my control, as well as an overload of physical and mental strength.

This Spring Festival is special, because the holiday started early, I chose to run on both sides of my mother's house and my mother-in-law's house.

On the twenty-sixth day of the Lunar New Year, I first went back to my mother's home in a third-tier city in Hubei. In those days, it had just snowed heavily in Hubei, and I had already organized the reunion of my old classmates the next night in advance, and I had also invited a teacher. Luckily, I was just over an hour late and got home.

On the first day of the Lunar New Year, I took my children to my mother-in-law's house, because we were worried that the traffic on the road would not fully recover, we chose to travel by public transportation as much as possible, and also played out the amount of time in advance, first to the railway station, then to take the intercity train to Wuhan Tianhe Airport, and then fly to Jiangsu. Although the plane only flew for more than 1 hour, the whole process took nearly 8 hours, and the physical strength was close to overdraft.

The overload of energy is mainly due to taking care of the baby and accompanying the elderly.

I usually only take the baby on weekends, and I only take one baby with my family, but after returning to my hometown, I often take three babies alone, and I have to accompany the children to play ball, poker, and be a mediator for the children. The mental and physical exertion is far beyond my capacity.

What I didn't expect was that there would be accidents with a baby. One day, 5 of us adults and 3 children went to a scenic spot to play. As a result, one of the children suddenly went missing, either because the adults hadn't seen each other for a long time and were too energetic, or because the child was running too fast. We immediately looked for the child in the whole scenic area, about half an hour after searching, the child's parents had already made the worst preparations, fortunately, the child was found in the end.

When helping the elderly to receive relatives, there were also some embarrassing scenes. On the second day of the Lunar New Year, my in-laws invited more than 40 relatives to dinner. My husband introduced the relatives at each table, and I responded with a polite smile, as if remembering everyone, and after eating, they offered to let me help take a group photo. I couldn't tell who was who, so I could only say, "Which lady is in the row, move to the left......”

I am usually busy, and both the elderly and my husband are very supportive of my work, so this holiday, my expectation is to give more and prioritize the needs of my family, so that they will continue to support me on a daily basis.

I also put some thought into the party in advance. For example, during the New Year's dinner, I prepared a lottery ticket and gave it to everyone to scratch the prize on the spot, and everyone was very happy regardless of whether they won the lottery or not, and they felt very innovative; I also prepared some festive snacks for everyone, let the oldest give the penultimate smoke, and so on, it is easy to mobilize everyone's enthusiasm and let everyone toast and drink with each other.

This Spring Festival, parties and busyness are the norm, but the most comfortable moment is when the family chats and plays games after the relatives leave.

In fact, my ideal Spring Festival is that I don't have to go around with relatives, and I don't have so many gatherings and rules, so it's good to spend it as an ordinary holiday, such as going out to travel, or spending time with my family at home.

During the Spring Festival holiday, Hubei and Jiangsu ran at both ends, and it was the first time we arranged it after marriage, although we were fully prepared, but there were still many emergencies that could not be coped. In the future, I don't want to arrange such a dense itinerary for the Spring Festival, and I want to focus on accompanying my family on one side.

I am about to return to work, and I have been mentally prepared for a long time, hoping to return to a controllable work rhythm as soon as possible, but in terms of physical strength and energy, it will indeed take a few days to slow down. Every night these days, I listen to familiar podcasts before going to bed or in the shower, or do some things that I am used to doing, so as to find some sense of order and calm myself.

I had a fight during the Spring Festival and didn't go home for two years, but this year I reconciled with myself Yangyang |31 years old Chengdu.

Now thinking back to the Spring Festival in 2019, I still have palpitations, and it was also in that year that I was officially diagnosed with "fear of going home for the New Year".

That year, I took my pet dog and took a hitchhike from Hangzhou to Chengdu for the New Year, but on Chinese New Year's Eve, my father used his pet as the fuse to talk about my unwillingness to return to my hometown to inherit the family's small factory, not falling in love and not getting married, working outside the home unstable and low salary, and had a big fight with me, and I returned to Hangzhou on the second day of the new year.

Before this quarrel, there were actually many signs. For example, my parents are against me raising a dog, but they think that this is what the elderly should do, and young people who have pets are not doing their jobs properly and delaying marriage and having children; They also forced me to go back to work in the factory and asked me to stay in each department for a few days to get used to the environment, but after only two weeks, I chose to "escape" because my dad was too controlling, and I spent almost every day in "being lectured" and "criticized".

He has been strict with me since I was a child, whether it is going to college or looking for a job, the more he wants to arrange for me, the more I want to go outside and live independently. Over the years, no matter what I did outside, he felt that I had "achieved nothing", which was far worse than what he had done back then, and not only did he not make any money from the work I do now, but also did not accumulate any experience, in short, it was difficult to get his approval.

After that quarrel, I didn't go home for the New Year in 2020 and 2021, nor did I say a word to my dad, just contacted my mom one-way. Until 2022, my mother suddenly told me that I didn't want to continue to be caught between the two of us, I could understand her feelings, and after a long ideological struggle, I gave my father a **, which was considered to be an icebreaker.

However, when I went home for the Chinese New Year this year, I still made a lot of mental and operational preparations, because the conflict was not resolved.

In order not to let them recall the quarrel that year, I chose to leave the dog in Hangzhou and did not bring it back for the New Year, worried about the dog's mental state, in addition to finding a door-to-door feeding, I will also watch the monitoring and talk to it when I go out.

I did what I could, but my relatives wouldn't "let me go". As soon as we met, the topic couldn't escape urging marriage, income, and filial piety, and repeatedly compared my relatives and classmates of the same age with me, saying that some of them had already given birth to a second child, but I was still single; Some have been promoted, but I am still an ordinary employee; Some people even persuaded my mother to negotiate terms with me, saying that as long as I came back and got married, they would buy me a house and a car.

The "enthusiasm" of relatives is also reflected in the action, before the holiday years ago, I have arranged two blind dates, because of the affection I can only go back to see it, but their aesthetics are completely different from my aesthetics, they mainly look at the conditions, such as occupation, whether there is a establishment, family conditions, etc., and I mainly look at the edge, look at the degree of speculation. The two people they introduced were younger than me, and they met for a meal, and when they went back, they didn't contact each other again.

Now, I can only learn to reconcile with my parents and reconcile with myself. Seeing my parents getting older, my mentality is not as radical as before, I used to quarrel with my dad directly when I encountered conflicts, but now I feel that since the result can't be changed, and we can't convince each other, it's better to take a step back. In addition, I have become more and more aware of my mother's dilemma, and I really want to go home to spend time with my mother, and I will go out for a walk with her almost every day during the Chinese New Year.

I couldn't wait to go back to Hangzhou until the fifth day of the Chinese New Year. After having a pet, I really don't dare to leave it for too long, and I don't worry about it being home alone. In addition, after a long time, all kinds of contradictions began to be exposed and intensified, and sometimes I felt that the atmosphere was not right, and I would pretend that I had work to deal with, and go back to my room to stay calm and calm by myself. It's better to go back early, at least you can maintain the family relationship at a good time.

The trip back to his hometown is comparable to that of special forces, and he was almost poisoned in the hospital when he was looking for a friend for the New Year29 years old, Beijing.

During this year's Spring Festival holiday, I went on a special forces trip.

I first went back to my hometown in Hebei a year ago, but I was either in the car or on the way every day.

After working outside for four or five years, although the city where I work is only an hour's drive from my hometown, I only go back once or twice a year, so all relatives have to say hello and sit down to chat with them, otherwise they will be considered ignorant.

On the first day I returned to my hometown, I arrived home at 8 o'clock in the evening, and I ate and chatted with my family until the second half of the night. At half past six the next morning, I was called up to sweep the grave, and then went back to the village to see my grandmother's house. After sitting at my grandmother's house for a while, I was dragged to my uncle's house for a spin.

I stayed in my hometown for less than three days, and every day I took the car to accompany my family to various places during the day, and chatted with melon seeds at night, even if I got up at 6 o'clock in the morning and slept at two or three o'clock in the evening, I felt that there was not enough time. In two days, I met more than a dozen relatives and traveled to five places in my hometown.

And every time I chat, everyone will talk about my marriage problems, although I have been urged to get used to it, but I heard my grandmother say that she is almost 80 years old, and ** is my lifelong event, or I can't help but have a sour nose.

So I decided to run away from Hebei to Anhui to play with friends. But during the Spring Festival, it was difficult to buy tickets, high-speed rail tickets could not be bought, and I could only take the train for 14 hours.

The ticket was at 1 a.m., and my uncle said that it was not safe for a girl to be at the station at night, so he took me to the station, and of course he did not bypass the marriage urging along the way.

In this way, I embarked on a journey to Anhui, thinking that the two girls would celebrate the New Year together, without going to relatives and not being urged to marry, which was very beautiful, but it backfired.

Since I hadn't taken the train for a long time, I tossed and turned on the sleeper that night and barely slept all night. I did the math that from the time I got home, three days added up to just over 10 hours of sleep. Before I had time to rest at my friend's house, I started cooking Chinese New Year's Eve dinner again, although there were only two of us, but we also had to have the excitement of the New Year, so I made ten dishes and made a perfect one. Originally, we planned to make dumplings and wait for the early morning to eat them, but we were almost poisoned and hospitalized that night.

There is no heating in Anhui in winter, and as a northerner who does not carry the cold, my friend was afraid that I would be cold and specially bought a charcoal stove, and the danger was buried. It was the first time we used it, and at first the charcoal couldn't be burned, and then it finally burned, and a bigger problem arose.

During the meal, the two of us felt confused, and our first reaction at that time was that maybe we were too tired from cooking, and said that we would not keep the year for a while, and went back to the room to sleep. However, our head became more and more dizzy, and accompanied by symptoms such as heart palpitations and tinnitus, and we felt a little wrong, so we suspected that it might be carbon monoxide poisoning, so the two struggled to open the balcony door, and after half an hour of cold wind, they were a little more sober.

When we got back to our rooms, we put out the stove, opened the doors and windows of each room, and went downstairs in a big circle.

At 10 o'clock on Chinese New Year's Eve, when families were eating Chinese New Year's Eve dinner and watching the Spring Festival Gala, the two of us wore coats and helped each other on the road, and joked that this year was not ordinary, and we almost took our lives.

After 5 consecutive days of tossing, I woke up on the first day of the Lunar New Year, and I wanted to go to work, and I felt that it was still easy and safe to work.

At the dinner table, he was educated by his elders in turn, or the relationship between work was simple Xiaofei |Changsha 30+ years old.

Spending the Spring Festival in my hometown, the biggest feeling is: there are relationships everywhere. Parents, relatives, classmates, friends, ......All kinds of relationships are intricate, and the Chinese New Year is a magnifying glass for this network. I, a migrant worker who came back from the city, was really a little uncomfortable.

For example, when I go to relatives, I have been back for a short time this time, and I can't go all the way to visit relatives and friends during the Spring Festival, so I have to make trade-offs. I just wanted to visit relatives who were close to me and worthy of in-depth contact, and when my mother knew what I thought, she gave me a hard education, saying that I could not be treated differently, and other relatives would have opinions. So for many days during the holidays, I spent time with some relatives I didn't know, forcing a smile on my face.

I wanted to save up for a dinner with a few cousins who used to play with me as a child, but I didn't get together. Originally, we were all in touch, but an elder suddenly called ** and said that if we want to get together, we will get together, and he will arrange it. I refused, saying I didn't want to be with my elders. Then my words spread, saying that I was disrespectful and too arrogant, and the dinner was canceled.

In the past few days of "spending time with my relatives", I feel that it is difficult for me to fit in with them. Everyone chatted about trivial matters and neighborhood gossip every day, and they chatted tirelessly all day long. I really didn't have much fun and couldn't participate in their conversations.

At the dinner table, the male elders talked about the economic situation and national affairs, and they were quite instructive, and some of them were able to speak well, but in my opinion, many of the things they said were neither true nor insightful, and many of their views were very extreme. At one point I tried to refute and was interrupted without saying a few words. Another time I made a point of view, and was ridiculed by an elder, saying that young people are not deeply involved in the world, and they should be humble.

The elders have their own set of philosophies and theories of life, and they think they are very correct, and they often proudly use them to educate the young. I found that I was not communicating with them in a topic system at all, and my way of expressing myself was a bit bookish, not down-to-earth enough, and perhaps a bit old-fashioned in their eyes. I couldn't tell them, so I laughed later: "You're right." ”

I began to understand why so many young people are reluctant to go back to their hometowns, and it is difficult to go back because they have been separated from the relationships and contexts of their hometowns for many years. In the past few days of vacation, I am bent on returning to work after the holiday and returning to my familiar living environment. Although it is tiring to go to work, the relationship is simple, and there are not so many worries and trade-offs. More critically, there won't be so many "elders" to educate you.

In addition, there are many favors between relatives, and they can't be sorted out, each family has its own ideas and interests, and they are secretly competing behind their backs, but on the table, everyone maintains a harmonious atmosphere. I, who has been away from home for many years, suddenly squeezed into the network of my hometown, is a variable that can upset the balance, so it needs to be converged. It wasn't until after the holidays that I slowly realized this truth.

At the request of the interviewee, Yangyang, Momo, Chen An, Guagua, and Xiaofei are pseudonyms in the article.