The international spread of the Spring Festival allows the world to share the "Year of China".
Song Zhiming. In the whole world, there are no Chinese people; Everywhere the river and the sea flow, all hear Chinese. "The Chinese New Year is undoubtedly showing strong local endogenous force and international influence, and it is an indisputable fact that this most important traditional festival of the Chinese nation is being internationalized. In December 2023, the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to designate the Chinese New Year as a "United Nations holiday", which is officially the 10th "fixed holiday" of the United Nations, alongside nine famous traditional cultural festivals such as New Year's Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Eid al-Fitr. This news has added evidence to the internationalization of the Chinese New Year and the fact that it has become a "world holiday". In the context of the current world, globalization is still an irreversible mainstream trend, and in this context, the Chinese New Year, as a genetic representation of national culture and a representative of traditional cultural symbols, is particularly important to examine the subject, history, path and connotation of traditional culture in its international communication.
On February 9, 2024 local time, Sichuan's "intangible cultural heritage" was unveiled at the "Happy New Year" themed cultural event in Russia (**Sichuan Foreign Affairs).
The international communication of the Spring Festival has changed from "closed" to "public festival".
At present, the main body of Spring Festival communication and reception can be divided into three levels: Chinese mainland people, overseas Chinese and international people, and from the perspective of the "extraterritorial radiation" element of cultural communication, overseas Chinese and Chinese are undoubtedly the main body of international communication. Due to complex factors such as historical evolution, intergenerational change, and interracial marriage, the population of this group has never been accurately counted, and the relevant data are only conservative rough estimates. **According to the data of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, there are currently about 60 million overseas Chinese in the world, mainly concentrated in Southeast Asian countries, followed by North America, Europe and Australia, and a small number of people scattered in Latin America and Africa.
Theoretically, with the emergence of the first Chinese immigrants or groups overseas, the Spring Festival, as an almost innate cultural symbol of the Chinese nation, began its international communication journey. For example, in 1654, the Dutch colonists transported three Chinese criminals to Mauritius in eastern Africa, and in the 60s of the 19th century, there was the first upsurge of Chinese immigration to Mauritius, and in 1860 alone, there were 379 Chinese who arrived in Mauritius, most of whom were indentured laborers. In North America, the large-scale immigration of Chinese began with the "gold rush" in California in 1848, and by 1880, there were more than 100,000 Chinese workers in the United States. With the rapid growth of the population, the Chinese community was naturally formed, which is the embodiment of the collective characteristics of Chinese culture, but also the natural response to the isolation abroad, dealing with discrimination, exclusion and difficult livelihoods, the early Chinese immigrants did not help each other, forming a "joint force", it was almost difficult to survive, these early communities were the prototype of Chinatowns that later spread all over the world, and they were also the epitome and transplantation of the "rural China" described by Fei Xiaotong outside the territory. In the early days, these diaspora Chinese all faced language barriers, livelihood difficulties and cultural adaptation difficulties, and homesickness spontaneously arose, and this "nostalgia" became especially strong every time the festival came. The earliest Chinatown in the United States appeared around 1850, the early festival ceremonies were frequent and lively, the characteristics of traditional Chinese society in these "Chinatown" and "Chinese Society" have been maintained from beginning to end, even the calendar uses the traditional Chinese luni-solar calendar, the Mid-Autumn Festival moon, Qingming ancestor worship, Dragon Boat Festival dumpling, Bon are highly valued, the Spring Festival is particularly grand, "after midnight fasting......On the first day of the Lunar New Year, firecrackers are noisy, and the streets are full of red paper ......”
The Spring Festival truly reflects the improvement of the country's "soft power" after the reform and opening up, especially since the 21st century, China has become the world's second largest economy, political, military, diplomatic and other comprehensive national strength has been greatly improved, increasingly showing an open and civilized image of a big country, cultural attraction and influence have also been qualitatively improved, and the international communication of the Spring Festival has entered a new stage in history. This shows that the strength of a nation-state's cultural dissemination depends on whether it has a profound historical accumulation on the one hand, and has many important "cores" such as religion and philosophy that arouse the interests of the world, and on the other hand, it also needs the "hard power" of the nation-state itself, which is indispensable. At present, there are nearly 100 million overseas Chinese and Chinese, and this huge main body of communication all attaches importance to the individual and social functions of the Spring Festival in the places of immigration, and the main spirit of "going abroad is more patriotic", "I am China" and "China is here during the Spring Festival" can be fully demonstrated through the Spring Festival. At the same time, this active "self" cultural consciousness has also begun to be widely accepted by countries around the world.
At present, nearly 20 countries around the world have taken the Spring Festival as a legal holiday, including North Korea, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, these "Confucian civilization circle" or "Chinese character cultural circle" countries, as well as Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries deeply influenced by Chinese culture, the United States, Australia and other "** civilization" countries in some states or regions set the Spring Festival as a legal holiday. The Chinese New Year is becoming an international grand festival, which is very different from the "closed" and "self-entertaining" limited to "closed" and "self-entertainment" in the late Qing Dynasty a hundred years ago, and has been transformed from a "private ceremony" of the Chinese community to a "public festival".
The international dissemination of the Spring Festival is to continue the traditional culture through the integration and innovation of "different cultures".
The Spring Festival began to take root in the "heterogeneous" environment of the Chinese people, at first it was limited to individuals, families or closed Chinese communities, and was excluded and divided outside the mainstream cultural environment, and then gradually recognized and partially accepted by the people of the host country, but it was still a marginal etiquette in the mainstream society on the whole. But today, the Spring Festival is becoming international, whether it is its own long history or the international influence it has gradually acquired, making it a real "aggregation festival". However, people tend to pay attention to the vicissitudes of the vicissitudes of overseas Chinese's collective spiritual belonging and cultural identity from humble to self-confident, but ignore the other side, that is, the international spread of the Spring Festival is a process of mutual contact, absorption and new changes with heterogeneous cultures and customs, and it is a special field that is different from the evolution of the Spring Festival in China.
The Book of Rites, the Book of Music" cloud: "Great music is in harmony with heaven and earth, and great gifts are in harmony with heaven and earth." The "Heaven and Earth Festival" here emphasizes that daily etiquette and social celebrations are in line with the natural rhythm of the four seasons and the rotation of the year, and is the embodiment of traditional Chinese Confucian and Taoist philosophical ideas such as "heaven and man induction" and "unity of heaven and man". The Spring Festival is a typical festival in temperate regions, which is in harmony with "heaven and earth", and the meaning of the beginning of spring and the renewal of Vientiane is born naturally. However, for Chinese who have migrated to the ** belt, the equator, and the southern hemisphere, the natural rhythm of the four seasons is not clear, and the seasonal characteristics of the Spring Festival change due to the difference in geographical space, and collide and integrate with the customs of the immigration area, giving birth to many new Spring Festival rituals. For example, in Penang, Malaysia, the fifteenth day of the first lunar month is popular with a custom called "mandarin orange", on the night of the Lantern Festival, unmarried women throw citrus into the water on the lake and the coast, and make a wish to be able to choose a good mate in the future, the Lantern Festival is endowed with the meaning of "marriage" and "childbirth", although it is quite the legacy of the meeting of men and women in the Han and Wei dynasties, but it is obviously also the product of the combination of local customs and customs. In Thailand, the Spring Festival ritual is contaminated with a strong Buddhist atmosphere, the first thing to do at the beginning of the first month is to go to the temple with the locals, the Chinese worship of various gods far beyond the country, including the Buddha, Maitreya Buddha, God of Wealth, the Lord of the Land, the ancestors of these traditional gods, there are also such as "Ben Tou Gong" such a local name of the city god, and even to sacrifice the dead souls and ghosts, the first day of the Spring Festival has become a "day of worship".
As for North America and Europe, the Spring Festival will inevitably produce new modern "narrative methods" such as ** religion and Christmas. According to a survey on Chinese holidays in the United States, many Chinese people celebrate the Spring Festival in groups, led by pastors in prayer, and then sing Christmas gospel songs and songs such as "Jasmine". This scene is a portrayal of the "localization" of the Spring Festival. At present, there are more than 5 million Chinese in the United States, and Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, including the traditional "Nanyang" countries in southern Thailand, the number of overseas Chinese exceeds 20 million, and it is the largest migration place for Chinese immigrants. It has significant communication significance. However, it should be noted that although they are experiencing the connotation of foreign cultures, the Chinese have always maintained the basic core of traditional culture when spreading festivals such as the Spring Festival, as stated in the "Book of Rites": "It is not easy to cultivate its teachings; It is not easy to be in the right place. ”
Refining the ritual and symbolic meaning of the Spring Festival and creating Spring Festival cultural products is an effective way to further promote the international dissemination of the Spring Festival
A national festival ceremony can be spread around the world, must have a solemn and distinctive ritual form, rich and profound cultural symbolic significance, and at the same time, in today's consumer society, to create a wide circulation of festival cultural products is also an important symbol of its dissemination. It is an indisputable fact that the Spring Festival has spread around the world as a "world holiday", but there is still a gap compared to Western festivals such as Christmas. In the long history of evolution, the Spring Festival has formed a series of folk customs such as welcoming and sending off the god of the stove, purifying and cleaning the house, pasting the Spring Festival, writing blessing characters, keeping the New Year on Chinese New Year's Eve, setting off firecrackers, sacrificing heaven and earth and ancestors, eating dumpling rice cakes, dragon and lion dances, etc., these folk customs undoubtedly play a religious symbol, dispel diseases and drive evil spirits, perform entertainment and other social functions, forming a unique "compound" ritual and cultural symbol chain of the Chinese Spring Festival.
However, from the perspective of international communication, festival ceremonies are not only required to be grand and solemn, but also required to have concise "operability", so that they are easier to spread and accept. As the main body of international communication, the inheritance of the Spring Festival tradition by overseas Chinese will inevitably be integrated with the local culture and the actual life of immigrants to produce "variants", which further emphasizes the complexity and diversity of its meaning. For example, the "Heaven and Earth Festival" is a traditional sacrificial activity during the Spring Festival, and worshipping the "Emperor Tianhou Tu" is a routine "ceremony" during the Spring Festival of the folk and dynasties, but the Indonesian Chinese were once popular in the Spring Festival to worship the "Guandi Shengjun" and overhaul the Guandi temple. This change is obviously due to the primary psychological need of the early Chinese community in a foreign country to "seek wealth" and succeed only by acting with "loyalty". There are countless "variations" of similar rituals among overseas Chinese groups and domestic people, which has caused complex changes and "uncertainties" in the tracing of the origin of the religious significance related to the Spring Festival. The Spring Festival has not been inscribed on the UNESCO World Intangible Cultural Heritage List so far, and the convergence and diversity of rituals and symbolic meanings may be one of the interfering factors. As early as 2009, the Dragon Boat Festival was included in the list of "intangible cultural heritage", becoming China's first world-class traditional festival, a cultural traceability (commemoration of Qu Yuan), a food symbol (zongzi), a large-scale ritual activity (dragon boat racing), the two comparisons, you will find that the ritual and symbol meaning of the Dragon Boat Festival is simpler and clearer.
At present, there are still some problems in the international communication of the Spring Festival, such as the lack of a strong sense of participation, the lack of integration and refinement of cultural symbols, and the lack of awareness and intensity of the development of festival cultural products. Such as "cultural symbols", which is the key content of the festival popularity and dissemination, and the zodiac is currently the most popular animal image at home and abroad, not only has a deep traditional cultural connotation such as the calendar year, but also contains ecological and other ideas, can be fixed as the first cultural symbol of the Spring Festival, and at the same time streamline, refine Chinese characters, calligraphy, food, firecrackers, songs and other Spring Festival folk customs, combined with the zodiac, rotate every year, form an annual combination of Chinese New Year rituals, symbols and cultural products, and do a good jobPlanning and promotion in advance should be an effective way to promote the further international dissemination of the Spring Festival, so as to effectively contribute to the realization of the real internationalization of the Spring Festival and the "Year of China" to truly become the "Year of the World".
*: People's Forum.
Author: Song Zhiming (Professor, School of International Chinese Education, Beijing Normal University).
Pictured: Fang Zhi Sichuan.