There is a day when we Chinese, no matter where we are, will be happy, busy, and intoxicated by it. On that day, the color and fragrance were complete, such as a thousand-year-old wine, such as a tree that does not wither for thousands of generations, such as the ancient paintings of Wu with the wind and Cao Yi out of the water, such as the most lyrical and colorful movement composed by Xuanyuan Yellow Emperor, which is always moving. This is the Year of China.
Let's just talk about the taste. In my memory, as soon as we enter the wax moon every year, the smell begins to drift away, and it is getting stronger day by day. That's the flavor of the year. On the twenty-third day of the lunar month, the flavor of the New Year is so strong that everyone, especially the dolls, is so excited that they get carried away. In my hometown of northern Shaanxi, the grinding and grinding that usually seem to be idle are spinning like a spinning top at this time. Yellow rice, soft rice, wheat, buckwheat, all kinds of grain turned into powder, and it spread everywhere, and the air was fragrant. Next, every family kills pigs, slaughters sheep, frying oil cakes, sweeps houses, hangs lanterns, pastes couplets, shaves men's heads, and women's faces (a beauty way to remove hair on the face with threads), everyone's appearance is new, and people are really drunk before drinking!
Needless to say, the dumplings on the first day of the new year are like fairies, beautiful and graceful, and in the sound of firecrackers, everyone eats fragrant and warm. After the second day of the Lunar New Year, we eat oil buns, oil cakes, thick wine, hot pot, beef meatballs, pork noodles, mutton noodles and buckwheat noodles and other "New Year's tea and rice" every day. My birthday is the twelfth day of the first lunar month, and I have hardly ever been given a birthday by my family since I was a child – I simply did not have the time and opportunity to do so. Because I always wear new clothes for the New Year, bouncing and jumping, and following my mother to a relative's house, which is equivalent to celebrating my birthday in every family.
For thousands of years, this festival has left many good memories for our great nation. "The step is full of plum su, and the flower is candle red. (Li Shimin's "Keeping the Year") "Keeping the New Year's Arong family, the pepper plate has been sung to flowers." (Du Fu's "Du Wei Guards the Year") "Close the door and guard the **, and burn the fire until early in the morning." (Chu Guangxi, "Qin Zhong Shou Sui")....Chinese New Year's Eve is an important day, "one night even two years old, five years and two years". On the Chinese New Year's Eve of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the court celebrated the New Year in a big way, the wine banquet was full of songs and dances, and the agarwood and sandalwood bonfires were lit, the flames soared to the sky, the incense smelled for dozens of miles, and sometimes more than 200 cars were burned in one night. In the folk, or light lamps and candles, or light fires, eat reunion dinners, drink pepper wine, and prepare for the feast on the first day of the new year, most of the people stay up all night without sleeping. To celebrate this day, the Tang Dynasty had a seven-day holiday (the winter solstice also had a seven-day holiday), and the Song Dynasty was even more solemn, with various holidays added together for a month. In modern times, during the border period, I was born and grew up. I remember that during the Spring Festival, the new Yangge movement was carried out, and the ancient city of Yan'an was very lively, with troops, institutions, schools, chambers of commerce, and farmers all having Yangko team performances, during which there was also an ancient fireworks show "molten iron flowering": the molten iron of thousands of degrees Celsius was melted and splashed with golden flowers, flying all over the sky. I ran back and forth every day, and often forgot to eat. When I was a little older, I also became the backbone of Yangge performance, in addition to twisting Yangge, I also performed a lot of Yangge opera, and I gradually fell in love with literature and art. In 1943, many Yangge teams rushed to the jujube orchard to pay New Year's greetings to the leaders of *** and other **, and also took the opportunity to congratulate and toast his neighbor Lao Farmer. Yangge has connected the feelings of all walks of life and invigorated the spirit of the military and the people. During that period, there were also a large number of Yangyang operas and Yangge dances that the masses liked to see, such as "Brothers and Sisters Open Up the Wasteland", "Supporting the Army Flower Drum" and "Nanniwan". This period of history deserves to be written into the annals of history.
Although I am old now, I still think of the past of the Chinese New Year in my childhood, and I am still full of blood and excitement, and I feel that this most solemn festival of the year is really beautiful. It makes the stars and moon in the sky extraordinarily brilliant; It makes people feel that the wheat waves on the earth are close at hand, and they are very kind; It makes the sweat that people shed for a year turn into warm and sweet snowflakes that fall on people's hearts.
The profound cultural connotation of the Spring Festival has a long history and is endless, which has blessed the hearts of countless Chinese sons and daughters, so that they can also taste the joy of the world in the midst of suffering. Even Xi'er, a girl from a poor family in "The White-Haired Girl", was happy and forgetful lyrical on the day of the New Year: "Other people's daughters have flowers to wear, but my father can't buy them with little money." Pulled a two-foot red head rope and tied it up for me. "Although the past is like smoke, and some literary and artistic works will be forgotten with the change of stars, this singing section of Xi'er in the opera has become an indelible artistic classic, because it condenses the purest and most profound emotions of our Chinese nation.
I lived in the United States for a few years with my children studying abroad. People who are far away from their hometowns have deep nostalgia in their hearts, and they value this grand festival - the Chinese New Year even more to make up for the loss of some of the preciousness and importance in their hearts. At that time, I wrote an article "Welcoming Spring Outside the Territory", which was published in the overseas edition of "People's **", which had the following text:
We have already purchased all kinds of New Year's goods. We've hung the big red lantern in the room. The refrigerator is so stuffed that it can't close the door. But I suddenly remembered, why did I forget to buy leeks? So I decided to drive to a Chinese supermarket.
In the wide parking lot in front of the Chinese supermarket, the car was already stuffed with no empty space, and we ran around several times, which took more than 20 minutes, and finally parked the car. At this time, although I knew that there were a lot of people in the supermarket today, I was still surprised when I entered the supermarket. It was a pot of boiling porridge, a pool of fish that could not swim, and a crop that could not be swayed in the wind without a gap! The composition of the population here is absolutely colorful: not only mainlanders, Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Macau, but also overseas Chinese from Europe, South America, Southeast Asia, and other ethnic Chinese who no longer speak Chinese. Everyone pushes the shopping cart, the cart is full, wafting the smell of our Chinese color, and it has become a world of Chinese people welcoming the Spring Festival.
We're finally in line for payment. But is that queue still called a queue? Where does it have the shape of a queue? It was not a line at all, it was a whole surface, a piece of people, crowded next to each other, or a colossal mass of a joyful and anxious crowd of human heads. Although it was the weather of the tenth winter month, I was already sweating slightly.
Chinese and ethnic Chinese overseas love Chinese New Year so much! We Chinese have the heart of the Chinese, the blood of the Chinese, and the traditions that the Chinese cannot change. In those days far away from their homeland, the Chinese Year is the sea of stars for the sons and daughters of China.
* The Spring Festival Gala of the TV station has brought us many good memories. The song, the dance, the sketch, and the outstanding actors are always treasured. In my hometown of northern Shaanxi, in addition to watching the Spring Festival Gala, in recent years, the atmosphere of Yangge has become popular again. Whether it is Yan'an, or Yulin in the north of Yan'an, it is very prosperous. "The red lion dance and dragon dance reflect the brightness of the heavens and the earth, the beautiful corn cob, and the beautiful small grains ......The Zhang family and the Li family sang pretty, and the Yulin Yangge was full of energy. This folk song is a vivid depiction of this scene.
Nowadays, although I spend most of my time in Beijing during the Spring Festival, I can see almost everything in my hometown clearly because of my WeChat circle of friends. The Yangge dance steps in my hometown, the sound of gongs and drums and suona in my hometown, the colorful silk in my hometown and the joyful mood of the people who are more brilliant than the colored silk all give me the warm comfort of this distant wanderer. My heart and theirs resonate wonderfully.
The years do not live, and the seasons flow. The Year of the Rabbit is about to become a thing of the past, and the Year of the Dragon is about to begin. In recent days, countless wanderers have flocked to stations, airports, and docks, eager to go home for a reunion. I wish every dear compatriot to return home as soon as possible and embrace the festive Chinese New Year; I wish you all the best in the renewal of Vientiane and another year of brilliant spring after removing the old cloth and making it new. Let's burn the fire in the stove a little hotter, and get ready for dumplings!