Eight things to do during the Spring Festival
Text: Feng Jicai.
People always ask me how I spent the year, and I thought it would be better to write a text, who asked to show it, so as not to repeat myself. When I picked up the pen, I suddenly thought of the "Ten Things of the New Year" written by the Qing dynasty Li Guangting in "Interpretation of Rural Dialects". The "Ten Things for the New Year" is written about the customs of the time, and the "Eight Things for the Spring Festival" I wrote is a personal practice for the New Year.
1. Take a walk around the suburban bazaar
Since the end of the 80s of the last century, every year since the fifteenth day of the lunar month, they have to go to the suburbs to visit the farmers' markets. The farmers' market has a set number of days, or every Wednesday or every five or seven days, each has its own basis, so the markets I go to every year are not necessarily the same, anyway, most of them are in the Jinghai, Duliu, and Yangliuqing areas in the west of the city. In order to infect the atmosphere and momentum of the next year. If you want to say that the flavor of the year is strong, you can also get the countryside. Watching the girls and daughters-in-law choose the window flowers, they almost bumped into an excited man carrying a pig's head, and the breath of the year came to their faces. In recent years, I often go out to investigate, and sometimes I miss the market on the outskirts of the city at the end of the month. But outside, if you catch thousands of migrant workers at the station to go home for the New Year, you will also feel the real meaning of the New Year.
Second, take a turn in front of the Tianhou Palace
Tianhou Temple has always been the center of Tianjin's New Year. The center of the year is where life dreams. In the past ten years, the paper-cutting here is unprecedentedly prosperous, Tianjin people have a lively brain, high craftsmanship, and new patterns. Therefore, every lunar month, I will go to the street in front of the palace to walk around, choose a few lovely paper-cuts, and then buy some traditional New Year's supplies such as incense, candles, velvet flowers, etc., to bring the taste of the New Year home.
3. Decorate the room
The atmosphere of the year is inseparable from decoration. As soon as the room is arranged inside and out, the posture of the year will be opened. I remember that thirty years ago, when the spirit and material were the poorest, at the end of the year, when I came home from work, I would see a roll of colorful paper placed in front of the threshold, open it to see, there were paper-cut couplets and auspicious pictures, needless to say, this is the old friend Hua Fei self-written self-painting self-carved self-cut and then sent to me to the door. He knows how I feel about this year.
Whenever this happens, I also hang some paintings on the wall. The first is a few ancient paintings of poplar willow youth that have been treasured for many years. For example, the Daoguang version of "Stilt Drawing", the Xianfeng version of "Lin Tu Yushu" and "Full House of Wealth", etc., I like to feel the style of the past from these old paintings. Then there is Wang Mengbai's 1927 painting "The Qing Dynasty of the Year". On the top of the picture, there is an old plum pile, with fresh branches and flowers; There is a pot of white daffodils below, and the pen is cool and elegant. It is a long axis, and the painting style is clean and healthy, which is its top grade. Interesting is the inscription on the painting: "The guest is calm and leisurely, born indifferent and fairy, there is nothing else in the mountain residence on Chinese New Year's Eve, and there is a plum blossom to celebrate the New Year." Ding Wei wrote this on Chinese New Year's Eve. Wang Yun Mengbai. "This painting has both the love of the year and the pursuit of the literati, and it is rare to be a work of Chinese New Year's Eve, so this axis must be hung high every year and the moon to spend the festival as a companion."
Fourth, prepare for the New Year
Every time he entered the wax moon, his friends smiled and said: "Dafeng is busy again." "The psychology of the year is that the more complete the New Year's goods should be prepared, the better, in order to enjoy the abundance of the coming year. When preparing for the New Year, the mother is the focus. My mother lives at my brother's house, so for many years, I have had to prepare enough eight kinds of New Year's goods for my mother to deliver one by one. It is roughly the red velvet flower of Yufengtai, the jasmine tea of Zhengxingde, as well as Jindi hanging money, Zhangzhou narcissus, Ningbo rice cake, incense candle offerings, dried and fresh fruits, raw and cooked meat. My mother is 90 years old this year, and she should be allowed to enjoy the beautiful life and the joy of her life.
5. Ancestor worship
On Chinese New Year's Eve, ancestor worship is essential. At the end of the last century, when I went to my hometown in Ningbo to save my relatives, an elder sister of the same clan named Feng Yimin gave me four ancestral portraits. The portrait is from the Ming Dynasty, the weather is ancient, the character is very characterful, it should be a masterpiece, because it enables me to span nearly 600 years and see the face of the ancestors. Since then, these ancestral portraits have been hung every year, offerings have been placed in front of the statues, and candles and incense have been lit to show gratitude. In the past, there was a tablet in the house, engraved with the words "Heaven and Earth Monarch Teacher". Today, there is no need to worship "Jun" anymore. "Heaven and earth", "pro" and "teacher" still have to be worshipped. Our lives benefit from them. Therefore, every year on Chinese New Year's Eve, it is indispensable to worship the ancestors of heaven and earth.
6. Write and draw
From the beginning of the year, at least three or four days are your own. Usually come to my door, mostly for business. There was no business during the holidays, and my personal business—writing and drawing—came to me like an old friend. For a while, it seems that pen and ink can speak. In the past few years, some longer articles and large paintings have been produced in the past few days. Of course, I also had to turn off my phone and landline. This time, a quiet feeling from the eyes and ears to the bottom of the heart, it is really like "isolation from the world", which can also be called "closing the door is deep in the mountains". I also laughed at myself for being "hidden".
7. Literati Collection
On the fifth day of the first month of each year, the first in the old city is the east, and I come forward to invite scholars who specialize in the local history and culture of Tianjin to gather together, which has become a "New Year's custom" in the cultural circle of Tianjin. Nankai District is the place where the local culture of Tianjin is most deeply rooted, and scholars are naturally happy to gather here. It is very happy to meet, greet each other, talk about the past and the present. Everyone is usually busy with their own work, and it is rare to see each other once a year. These "local experts" such as Yang Daxin, Zhang Zhong, Cui Jin, etc., are all living history, and in the past two years, attention has been paid to recruiting young scholars to join them. History and culture must always be passed down from generation to generation.
8. Down-to-earth
On the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, I would go to the book building or something else to sign autographs for readers. The writer and the reader are both connected by the book and separated by the book. A writer cannot survive without a confidant. That's why I have to sign the autograph for readers once a year on the sixth day of the new year. The book signed is a new work published that year, and there is also a "Chinese New Year Book" that cooperates with the Ministry of Culture of Tonight News every year. On this day, I met with enthusiastic readers and signed autographs and took photos, which was very cordial. With readers, the writer's heart is steady, so I call this kind of activity "grounded". I often sign for an hour or two, and my wrist is sore, but my heart is hot.
Then I will wave goodbye to the new year with the warm breath that fills my heart for the past few days.
Before the Spring Festival, a reporter asked how to spend the New Year? I smiled and asked, do you still use people to teach you during the Chinese New Year? My answer is that there has never been a love day in the coming year, and whoever wants to celebrate the New Year wants to be in trouble.
Chinese New Year is a day of nostalgia
Text: Feng Jicai.
After we have explained the origin, connotation, customs, and significance of the Spring Festival, we suddenly found that we forgot to say that the Spring Festival is a specific emotion.
Of all the Spring Festival carriers, none of the people who were huddled together and had worked so hard were unrelenting, and all of them were firmly eager to achieve an emotional goal: to go home. Thirsty and thirsty, he rushed home, pushed open the door, and immediately melted into the warmth of the source of his life.
There are your parents, even your grandparents, your brothers and sisters who work in the fields, and they all smile at you. And those very kind old tables, old cabinets, old things, old scenes, and the smell of the soul that only your lair can have.
Then, closely connected to your nest, there are many people: loved relatives and friends, old friends, old friends, old friends, neighbors, old streets and alleys, local customs and snacks. Maybe you've been away from home for too long, or you've been fighting outside for years, and the fading past has slipped to the edge of your memory, but at this moment, you come across a detail that will pull the old things that are sleeping in the depths of your heart to you. I remember meeting a high school classmate on the street who had been absent for at least 30 years, and at that moment I forgot his name, but blurted out his nickname "Big Tooth" - his front teeth were long, large, and outward. At that time, his classmates nicknamed him "Big Tooth". Who would have thought that at this moment, this nickname seems to have a magical power, pulling us back to the innocent and intimate boyhood. We began to ask each other, talk about ourselves, talk about the present, talk about the past; When talking about the classmates of the year, most of them were nicknames, which made us laugh. I stood on the street and talked for an hour.
From it, you will feel the urgency of life, the ruthlessness of time, the helplessness of life, and at the same time get the satisfaction that can only be achieved when you go home for the New Year. However, there are only these days of the year when you can really touch yesterday and the day before yesterday. It's like entering a wonderful and infinite time tunnel, and you can't help but drill into it.
Although during the New Year, we are saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new, and moving forward towards spring, but we enjoy more emotions but nostalgia.
One particular emotion in the Spring Festival is nostalgia. Chinese New Year is a nostalgic holiday.
Nostalgia is a kind of nostalgia for the past life, a kind of retrospective and enjoyment of memory, and a kind of picking up the fallen flowers of life.
Everyone has nostalgic needs in their hearts, and going home for the Spring Festival is to meet everyone's emotional needs; For this reason, the Spring Festival has such a majestic power. The huge magnetic field formed by the convergence of homeland, blood, and nostalgia is spread across every city and village in the mountains and rivers of the earth. This magnetic field produces potency and charm, which is not only the power of feelings, but also the power of culture.
Folklore is a way of identifying a common need out of a common need. Needs are spiritual, emotional, psychological, and ways are a culture. When this common need is "conventional", everyone will act in accordance with this folk way, such as going home for the New Year. Folklore is not forced, but voluntary and self-disciplined. It is a common need and a common expression, and at the same time the spiritual emotions of each person can be fully developed. In this way, the Spring Festival has become a necessity for us.
In this sense, all our folk festivals are expressions of emotion, and the emotions expressed are different. Qingming is the nostalgia of the ancestors, the Dragon Boat Festival is to promote the passion of life, and the Qixi Festival is to express the loyalty of men and women to love. Among them, many festivals are related to reunion - that is, family and blood kinship, such as the Mid-Autumn Festival. However, the Mid-Autumn Festival is different from the Spring Festival, which does not emphasize "going home", and there will be no "autumn transportation" with traffic congestion. Only the Spring Festival is a day of collective nostalgia for the Chinese. Because in the festival, the Spring Festival is a farewell to the old year. Nostalgia inevitably arises in the process of resignation.
In this way, we will express and express the family, nostalgia and nostalgia in our hearts through a series of folk customs that have been collectively created and passed down to the present day over thousands of years, such as reunion dinners and New Year's greetings. As a result, the family has been cohesive, and the hot land of the hometown has been warmed up. In fact, this is the cohesion that culture has endowed the Chinese nation with for 5,000 years.
Every person who goes home for the New Year in a foreign land, after spending the Spring Festival, doesn't they all feel compensated for a long-term debt to their relatives and get deep emotional satisfaction?
Therefore, the Spring Festival is a nostalgic day for Chinese.