Wen Wang Ying (Huai'an, Jiangsu).
The rural New Year is still the most like the New Year, and the Spring Festival couplets and firecrackers are not missing.
The strongest New Year's flavor is to paste the Spring Festival couplets, and by the afternoon of the thirtieth, every household has already pasted the Spring Festival couplets. I like to watch the Spring Festival couplets the most, look at my own house, and then go to see the neighbor's house, and find that the customs of northern Jiangsu are slightly different from my hometown.
The Spring Festival couplets in my hometown are relatively simple. The overall is a couplet on the door frame, two door gods on the door leaf, and a horizontal batch on the lintel.
And the Spring Festival couplets in northern Jiangsu are grand. Two large red ball velvet lanterns are hung on the left and right on the gate of the courtyard gatehouse, and the lanterns are written with auspicious words such as Wishing you prosperity and opening the door, and a circle of red tassels is decorated under the lantern, and a single spike hangs down in the middle. A gust of wind blew, and two lanterns swayed in the wind. On the two gates is a couplet in large letters. There is a hanging gallery on the lintel, and a row of small blessing characters, more than every year, or Wishing you prosperity. The small Fu character is the size of the palm, the first line is Wishing you prosperity and other auspicious words, the second line is a slightly larger Fu character, the hollow pattern is cut around the Fu character, and the bottom is cut into a spike. There are five stickers on the gate of the gatehouse, which means that the five blessings are coming, which originate from the longevity, wealth, well-being, virtue, and good death in the Book of Books; You can also paste seven, symbolizing the seven blessings and eliminating disasters.
A big word of blessing is pasted on the bedroom door to symbolize blessing. This character is usually written on a square piece of red paper, which rotates into a diamond shape when pasted. At the top are good wishes for good luck and good days, and on the left and right and below are firecrackers, peonies, fish, etc., representing festivity, flowers, and more than every year. There are also blessing words upside down, this one is not very particular, it depends on the surrounding small characters. The three small paper-cut characters on the lintel symbolize three kinds of blessings: happiness, good fortune and wealth.
The glass window is pasted with two circular paper-cut Fu word window flowers, the top is a money hole, the bottom is the ingot, the money hole is just below is a slightly larger Fu word, two lanterns on the left and right, the spare place with peonies, ingots, fish clusters. The window grille is a plastic paper-cut process, which is very exquisite, and the front is pasted on the glass with water, and the front of the window grille can be seen outdoors. Directly above the window frame, paste a small paper-cut word, and there are also not paste, more casual.
In and out of the yard in and out of the safety oblique sticker, both places are the same, in recent years have been simplified and not pasted.
The cousin's family came to pay New Year's greetings to their in-laws, and the three children were playing in the yard with a bag of whips. The daughter was not familiar with them, and she was timid, and she did not come forward. A child without a playmate must be lonely.
The three children took the ingenuity of placing the firecrackers under a cracked plastic basin, lit them with lighters, and ran away as fast as they could. Free-range children are smart, playful and protective of themselves. With a bang, the firecracker went off, and the plastic basin flew into the sky and then fell to the ground, cracking. They laughed. The children here are still happy about the New Year, they are the same as my childhood, they focus on the small cannons, but as an adult, I have forgotten to look for fun, tired of life, and feel like I have lost the taste of the New Year.
Compared with Chinese New Year's Eve, the Spring Festival day is slightly tasteless.
There is no need to elaborate on firecrackers, Chinese New Year's EveChinese New Year's Eve there is a small whip before eating. Now most people are keeping the New Year with the Spring Festival party, and some people have set off the big firecrackers on the day of the Spring Festival, and some people have set off at five or six o'clock in the morning. People who get up late can only see a pile of bright red cannon skins, and then eat a bowl of rice balls, and breakfast is over. At seven or eight o'clock, the tribesmen would pay respects to each other and talk, and the New Year's ceremony would be over.
At night, there are still people setting off fireworks, one after another. The weather is cold, and we are not used to staying in the city for a long time.
About the Author:Wang Ying works in Kunshan Branch of Huai'an Architectural Design and Research Institute in Jiangsu Province. Senior Engineer, National First-Class Registered Structural Engineer, Literature Lover.