Lunar New Year Eve – My Childhood Memory
OUR CULTIURES
BY Laura Ni Cultural Bridges Lead Editor
My name is Laura Ni. I have lived in the United States for over 23 years. Still, my childhood memories of celebrating Lunar New Year (the Spring Festival as it is called in China) are still vivid, like they just happened yesterday. I was born and grew up in Shanghai, China. Like the celebration for Christmas, which starts on Christmas Eve, the celebration for Lunar New Year starts on Lunar New Year Eve. On that day, I remember my parents would decorate the house with yellow or red Winter Sweet flowers, colorful Cat-tail Willows, and Chinese Daffodils to wish for resilience, bravery, perseverance, and reliability, as well as wish for a productive and successful new year. An inverted Chinese character, '福' (fu), is pasted on the door, symbolizing the arrival of blessings in the new year and all things going smoothly. During the day, everybody would help prepare the dinner feast. My favorite things to do to would be to help my parents make egg dumplings and handmade glutinous rice flour in a stone mill. Egg dumplings are made with handmade egg wrappers filled with pork filling, shaped like traditional Chinese gold ingots, symbolizing wealth and prosperity. A stone mill grinds rice and water into rice water, then processed into glutinous rice flour. My dad used it to make stuffed glutinous rice balls. In my memory, the must-have Lunar New Year’s dish was always glutinous rice balls, not dumplings. I never ate dumplings during Lunar New Year in my childhood. I only started eating them as part of Lunar New Year when I moved to the United States. Family members gathered on the Lunar New Year’s Eve for the dinner feast, which normally had over 15 dishes. That night, whether adults or children, everyone would chat, play games (like Chinese Majiang), or watch TV and stay up until midnight, symbolizing guarding the year. When the clock struck 12, everyone would rush outside to set off fireworks and firecrackers, lively and boisterous, welcoming the new year. Adults would also exchange New Year's greetings and congratulations. After setting off firecrackers, children would reluctantly go to sleep. After I was asleep, my parents would secretly place a red envelope with money inside under my pillows, hoping for safety and smoothness in the new year. Opening the red envelope was always the first thing I did when I woke up on Lunar New Year morning. Not because of the good wish, but because I was curious about how much was inside the red envelope. As I remember, we always celebrated Lunar New Year for 15 days until the Lantern Day festival. Every day was filled with endless laughter, happiness, and love from families and friends. I still remember the warm feeling every time I look back. Now I have my own kids, I tell them my memories of the Lunar New Year and wish they could feel the significance of the Chinese culture in my story.
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