Author: Lao She
According to the old rules in Beijing, the Lunar New Year (Spring Festival) begins almost at the beginning of the Lunar New Year. "It is the coldest time of the year, when the crows freeze to death. However, since spring comes soon after winter, people do not let the cold dampen their enthusiasm for celebrating the Lunar New Year and welcoming the Spring Festival. On the eighth day of the lunar month, people make congee at home and in temples.
This special congee is a sacrifice to the gods, but when you think about it, it is an expression of pride in the agricultural society - this congee is made of all kinds of rice, all kinds of beans, and all kinds of dried fruits (almonds, walnuts, melon seeds, lychee meat, lotus seeds, peanuts, raisins, diamond rice) boiled to make. ......) boiled down. It's not porridge, but a small agricultural fair.
The day of Lapa also involves soaking Lapa garlic. The garlic cloves are put into high vinegar on this day and sealed up for dumplings in the New Year. By the end of the year, the garlic soaked as emerald color, and vinegar also has some spicy flavor, color and taste double beautiful, so that people want to eat a few more dumplings. In Beijing, every family eats dumplings on New Year's Day.
From the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, shoppers are stepping up their New Year's goods, and there are more stalls on the street - selling spring scrolls, New Year's paintings, honey offerings, daffodils, and so on, all of which are only available during this season. These New Year's stalls make children's hearts beat a little faster. In the hutongs, there are more and more sophisticated voices than usual, including those that appear only in the month of Lunar New Year, such as those selling gendarmes, pine branches, barley, rice cakes and so on.
When there was an emperor, schoolchildren stopped going to school on the 19th day of the lunar month and took a month's vacation. Almost the first thing the children did to prepare for the New Year was to buy mixed rice. This was made from various kinds of dried fruits (peanuts, jujube, hazelnuts, chestnuts, etc.) mixed with candied fruit, ordinary with skin, advanced without skin - for example, hazelnuts with skin for the ordinary, hazelnuts with flesh for the advanced.
Children love to eat these bits and pieces, and even if they don't have dumplings to eat, they still have to buy the mix. The second most important thing they do is buy firecrackers, especially the boys. I'm afraid the third thing is to buy playthings -- kites, firecrackers, harmoniums and so on -- and New Year's paintings.
Children are busy and adults are nervous. They must prepare everything they will eat and drink for the New Year. They also had to make new shoes and clothes for the children quickly, so that the New Year would be a time of renewal.
The 23rd day of the Lunar New Year is almost a "dress rehearsal" for the New Year. In the old society, the night of the family sacrifices Zao Wang, from a dark child firecrackers will sound, with the sound of firecrackers to Zao Wang's paper image incineration, the beautiful name called Zao Wang sent to heaven. In the first few days, the street has more or less how much to sell maltose and sugar, sugar shape or long square or the size of the melon shape. According to the old saying, by sticking Zao Wang's mouth with sugar, he will not report bad things in the family to the Jade Emperor when he gets to heaven. Nowadays, there are still sellers of sugar, but it is only enjoyed by everyone and no longer sticks to Zao Wang's mouth.
After the twenty-third, everyone gets even busier, and the New Year is here in the blink of an eye, ah. Before New Year's Eve, families must put up the Spring Festival couplets and must clean the house once, called sweeping. Meat, chicken, fish, vegetables, rice cakes and other things must be prepared enough, at least enough to eat a week - according to the old custom, most of the store closed for five days, to the sixth day of the first month before opening. If you don't prepare food for the next few days, it's not easy to replenish it in the interim.
And, in the old society, the old mother theory, preaching in the New Year's Eve to cut out everything that should be cut out, so as to save the first day of the first month of the first five and then move the knife, move the knife cut is unlucky. This contains superstitious meaning, but it also shows that we are indeed peace-loving people, in the first of the year even cut the knife are not willing to move a one.
New Year's Eve is a busy time. The smell of wine and meat was everywhere. Young and old men and women are wearing new clothes, red couplets posted outside the door, the house posted a good colorful New Year's paintings, which family lights all night, not interrupted, the sound of artillery day and night. Those who work outside, unless absolutely necessary, must rush home to eat a reunion dinner and pay tribute to their ancestors. On this night, except for very young children, no one sleeps, but all have to observe the New Year.
New Year's Day is very different from New Year's Eve: on New Year's Eve, the streets are crowded with people; on New Year's Day, the stores are boarded up, and in front of the door are piles of firecrackers and paper skins that were set off last night, and the whole city is at rest.
Men go out before noon to relatives and friends to pay their respects. The women received guests in their homes. Meanwhile, many temples inside and outside the city were open for people to visit, and vendors set up stalls, selling tea, food, and various toys outside the temples. The Dazhong Temple outside the north city, the Baiyunguan Temple outside the west city, and the Fire God Temple (Factory Deen) in the south city were the most famous. However, the first two or three days of the opening of the temple, not very lively, because people are still busy celebrating the New Year with each other, there is no time for this.
By the fifth or sixth day of the month, the temple fair began to take off, and children were especially eager to go there in order to see the wild scenery outside the city, ride donkeys, and buy those New Year's toys. Baiyun Guan outside the square there are race proud car race horse; in the elderly, it is said that there are camel races. These races do not strive to see who comes first and who comes second, but rather to show off the fine manners and skills of the mules and horses and their riders in front of an audience.
Most of the stores opened on the sixth day of the month, and again firecrackers were set off, and from dawn until early morning the sound of cannon was heard all over the city. Despite the opening, people aren't very busy, except for stores selling food and other important daily necessities, and shopkeepers can take turns visiting temples, strolling along footbridges, and listening to opera.
When the Lantern Festival (from the 13th to the 17th day of the first month) comes to market, it is the climax of the New Year. New Year's Eve is lively, but there is no moonlight; the Lantern Festival, on the other hand, happens to have a bright moon in the sky. New Year's Day is decent, with bright red spring couplets pasted in front of every house and people wearing new clothes, but it's not beautiful enough. The Lantern Festival, everywhere hanging lights and colorful, the whole street like a happy event, fire and beautiful.
Famous old stores have to hang out hundreds of lamps, some of them are all glass, some of them are all cow horn, some of them are all yarn lamps; some of them are in all shapes and colors, some of them are all painted all the "Dream of the Red Chamber" or "Water Margin" story.
This, in those days, was a kind of advertisement; once the lamps were up, anyone could enter the store and visit; in the evening, when the lamps were all lit with candles, there were even more viewers. This advertisement is not vulgar. Dried fruit store in the festival of lights also make a batch of miscellaneous business, so each unique, made all kinds of ice lanterns, or wheat seedlings made into one or two turquoise dragon, to attract customers.
In addition to hanging lanterns, the square also put flowers. In the City God Temple and lit up the fire judge, the tongue of fire from the judge's clay statue of the mouth, ears, nose, eyes out. In the park, sky lanterns are released and fly into the sky like giant stars.
Men and women came out to walk on the moon, watch the lanterns and fireworks; the streets were crowded with people. In the olden days, women did not go out easily, so they could have some freedom in the festival of lights.
Children buy all kinds of firecrackers and set them off, and even if they don't go out on the street to play, they can still have fun at home with sound and light. There are also lights at home: horse lanterns - the original movie - palace lanterns, paper lanterns of all shapes and colors, and yarn lanterns with little bells inside that jingle when the time comes. Everyone must also eat soup dumplings ah. It was indeed a wonderful and happy day.
In the blink of an eye, at the end of the temple, students should go to school, adults go back to business as usual, the New Year in the first month of the 19th end. The first month of the Lunar New Year and the first month of the lunar calendar is the time when everyone in rural society is most free, and pigs, cows and sheep are also growing up, so everyone has to kill pigs and slaughter sheep to pay for a year's hard work. After the Lantern Festival, the weather turns warm and everyone goes back to work. Although Beijing is a city, it follows the rural community in celebrating the New Year, and does so in a very lively way.
In the old days, New Year's Eve was inseparable from superstition. The congee, sugar and dumplings on New Year's Eve had to be offered to the Buddha before people could enjoy them. On New Year's Eve, we have to receive the gods; on the second day of the New Year, we have to sacrifice to the God of Wealth, eat Yuanbao soup (wonton), and some people have to go to the God of Wealth Temple to borrow paper treasures and burn the first incense. On the eighth day of the first month, we should give the old people Shunxing and pray for longevity.
So one of the biggest waste of money in those days was the money to buy incense, wax and paper horses. Now, people are not superstitious, so they save this expense and use it for useful purposes.
Special mention should be made of the fact that children nowadays only celebrate New Year's Eve happily, without being tainted by that superstition; they are only happy, without fear - fear of God and fear of ghosts. Perhaps, now the New Year is not as lively as before, but how sober and healthy it is. In the past, people celebrate the New Year with the blessing of gods and ghosts, but now it is the end of the year for everyone's labor, and everyone should celebrate the New Year happily.
2, "the flavor of the New Year"Author: Zhou Youbin
Memory, the New Year's air contains the flavor of celebration. It was not yet the 23rd day of the Lunar New Year, but the village already had a red-hot New Year's flavor, with New Year's plays, social fires, and gongs and drums. Occasionally, there are two "two kicks" or a crisp sound of firecrackers, which are firecrackers sold or just bought by the family, trying out the firecrackers. At the end of the year, the air in the village is filled with the smell of gunpowder from fireworks.
Memory, the New Year's air contains the sweet and tasty flavor of stove sugar. Lunar month twenty-third, a small year, folk saying is, Zao Wang Wang this day to the Jade Emperor "report work", this night, to Zao Wang Wang Zao sugar, in order to let Zao Wang sweet mouth, so that the "heavenly word of a good thing". The first thing you need to do is to get your hands on some of the most popular products and services in the world, and you'll be able to do that with the help of your own personal computer.
My memory is that the New Year's air is filled with the strong scent of frying and cooking. We are here to grind tofu on the 25th, cut meat on the 26th, kill a chicken on the 27th, send the noodles on the 28th, and steam the buns on the 29th. Early on New Year's Eve, you have to make dumplings, steam rice cakes, frying oil food, cooking the smell of white meat and the sound of chopping mincemeat continuously from each family out of ......
Waking up in the early morning on the first day of the New Year, the firecrackers of the people in the rush to make sacrifices in the early morning have sporadically sounded. When I opened my eyes, I felt that everything was brand new, a new house, new New Year's paintings, new window displays,......, and the Spring Festival couplets that you can see when you look up, "Look up and see joy" and "Lying in a blessed place". Because of the arrival of the New Year, all the ordinary things that you see every day seem to be given a new meaning and become beautiful in your eyes. The old clothes that we took off when we went to bed at night were packed away by our mother in a place we couldn't find, and the new clothes for each of us were neatly placed by our pillows, and we could smell the faint scent of the new cotton fabrics, which our mother put away one by one after we had fallen asleep.
The first thing to do in the New Year was to offer sacrifices. The incense was already lit, and the room was filled with the scent of incense. My mother warned us all with a solemn gaze that we were not allowed to laugh or raise our voices, and the atmosphere in the house was solemn and dignified. The first thing to do is to offer sacrifices to heaven and earth, followed by sacrifices to the God of Wealth and the God of the Stove, and finally to the ancestors.
Sacrificing heaven and earth is of course the most solemn, support a table in the courtyard, incense should be burned to five cones, put all kinds of tributes: knife head meat, dried fruits, deep-fried noodle cake, just out of the pot of hot dumplings ...... and then a little more sumptuous there will be chickens, ducks, and fish, yellow table, paper money burned up, the mother with a stick while fiddling with the side of a broken prayers, you can I can hear the words "blessing from above" and "peace every year" sporadically.
In the process of worship, the boys began to set off firecrackers, the sound of their own firecrackers and firecrackers from near and far intertwined, *** with the New Year's festivities pushed to the climax of the atmosphere.
3, "recalling the Spring Festival" (published in Putian Overseas Chinese Times, Kulan Wenyuan February 25)Author: Xu Huaizhong
The Spring Festival is the traditional festival of the Chinese nation. It can be said that it is by far the longest festival in the world. A good period of time before the Spring Festival, there are all kinds of tea parties to welcome the Spring Festival and to pay homage to the early New Year. Before and after the Lantern Festival, there are also to pay homage to the New Year, the continuation of a very long time. Not only long, and the content is quite rich, the festive atmosphere is extremely strong, it focuses on the auspicious and auspicious cultural heritage, accumulated a strong sense of love, is China's "and" culture of the vivid display. New Year's households stick Spring Festival couplets, men and women, young and old, the sound of firecrackers, is the Spring Festival atmosphere warmly conveyed, broadcast.
This year's Spring Festival, the children and grandchildren in foreign countries have come to Yuncheng to celebrate the New Year and have a lively time. After the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, they all went back. I'm not sure how much I'm going to be able to do this, but I'm sure I'll be able to do it, and I'm sure I'm going to be able to do it. From this, I experienced the mood of my parents before they were born: at that time, I was working abroad, seldom go back to my hometown to spend the New Year with my parents, but also go back to enjoy the joy of the hearth at home, but only stay for a few days. Before leaving, my mother always nagged me: I don't know that you have bought the tickets, otherwise I would have to stay with you for two more days.
Nowadays, parents have long been gone, and family reunion, New Year's Eve, experience the mood of the elders in the past New Year's Eve. Whenever the Spring Festival, always can not help but think back to the hours at home on New Year's Eve scene, although the parents were not economically active at that time, he (she) they always find ways to let their children have a good year, for which to add new clothes, to the New Year's Eve money, do a good job of cooking. The ability to have a good New Year's Eve seemed to be a measure of the ability of the fathers and mothers. Eat well, play well, wear well, said are auspicious words, harmonious atmosphere, only in this festival to create the most adequate, it is a blend of the countryside, affection, family love of all kinds of feelings. The Spring Festival, can be said to be pro plot.
Reform and opening up to a new period, in the promotion of excellent traditional culture in the sound wave, the Spring Festival is also more rich in new ideas. However, there are also people ringing to the foreign "Valentine's Day". There are also hope that our country has its own "Valentine's Day", such as the Lantern Festival or Tanabata can be done as their own "Valentine's Day". Tanabata is the legendary day when the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden meet. In classical poetry, Qin Guan, a famous writer of the Northern Song Dynasty, wrote: "The slender clouds are delicate, the flying stars transmit hatred, and the silver man is a long way in the dark. When the golden wind and jade dew meet, it is better than countless other things on earth. /If love is like water, good times are like a dream, and you can't bear to look at the road back to the Magpie Bridge, if two loves last forever, is it not in the morning and the evening?" ("Magpie Bridge Immortal")
The Lantern Watching and Lantern Swimming of the Lantern Festival is a sentimental and intentional activity of the Spring Festival. On the night of Shangyuan (i.e., the Lantern Festival) and a family of relatives who will be settling in a foreign country, they gather at a riverside restaurant. Outside the window, the white moon was in the sky, and there were fireworks opening in the air. As the saying goes: "The clouds cover the moon in the mid-autumn festival, and the rain hits the lanterns in the Lantern Festival", but this year's Lantern Festival moon is so bright. Thought of next year if again on the river building, loved ones have been far away in foreign countries, really: "alone on the river building thought quietly, moonlight like water water like sky. The same to look at the moon where people, the scenery is vaguely like last year". Suddenly in the joy of the heart a little gloomy. Thinking: recently reread "Dream of Red Mansions", I feel that the author of the clever place, it is often the most representative of the glory and wealth of the occasion, or at the time of enjoying the beauty of the occasion, to write out the characters revealed the feelings of sadness.
As Jia Fei returned to the province to celebrate the Lantern Festival, when the Grand View Garden has been built, the garden smoke, colorful flowers, said not all the peaceful weather, rich and noble style. But when Jia Fei Yuanchun met with Jia mother and other relatives, only sobbing to sob, others also "tears without words". Half a day, Jia Fei Fang endure sad and strong smile, comforting Jia mother, Mrs. Wang said: "On that day both sent me to that shall not be seen to go, so easy to go home today, ladies a while, not laughing and joking, but crying, a while I left, and do not know how early and late to come!" Said this, can not help but choke up.
The author has repeatedly written the characters "crying", "tears like rain" of sadness, which is the most glorious and prominent time. Another example is "the production of riddles Jia Zheng sad exposé language" this time, written by the Baochai do birthday, and play, and guess the riddles, in the celebration, Jia Zheng see made riddles, such as Jia Fei's "firecrackers", other people's "kite", "sea", "kite", "sea", "kite", "kite", "kite", "kite", "kite", "kite", "kite" and "kite". ", "sea lamps" and so on, there are ominous signs, the heart "feel more bored, a great sadness", write out the characters of sadness. Such, worthy of the author of "Dream of the Red Chamber" masterpiece. This is not to say that the "joy" must be "sad", but that the human "true feelings" is the most moving.
Looking back at the Spring Festival, I appreciated the element of "love". Television has a sentence although the advertising language: "to be out of love", but also out of the people to have "love" is important. It is also said that the elderly are more affectionate. This can be said to be a true reflection of the mentality of the elderly. Just as the great writer Bing Xin grandmother, the older the more "love", her famous saying: "love has everything". Elderly people and their families over the Spring Festival, unforgettable love, unforgettable love: affection, nostalgia, nostalgia, flesh and blood intertwined with the loom of the heart. Looking back on the Spring Festival, as if eating Putian olives, after eating the afterglow, also like drinking Guanyin tea, after drinking the aftertaste, the aftertaste is endless.
4, "in the provincial city in the New Year"Author: Ye Xin
Once joyfully ushered in the Spring Festival in the alley in Shanghai, the pocket of the coat tightly covered the adults rarely give the New Year's Eve money, thinking about the New Year, take this money to the bookstore to choose a good book, the heart is full of longing, so the heart is more happy, lit up a small firecrackers, let the sound of the firecrackers, the firecrackers, the fireworks, the firecrackers, the fireworks. Firecrackers, let the sound of crisp explosions in the sky. However, the deepest impression in my memory is still accompanied by the arrival of the New Year, the family more than those large and small, a wide range of tickets.
Buying oil has to be an oil ticket, buying meat has to be a meat ticket, buying clothes has to be a cloth ticket, buying tofu has to be based on a tofu ticket, and near the New Year's period, either the tickets were increased or it was announced that the same ticket could be used to buy twice as much food, especially sugar tickets, which were surely to be increased. To celebrate the New Year, but also each household additional New Year's Eve tickets, melon seeds, peanuts, gold needles, fungus and other New Year's Eve families can not do without snacks, ingredients with a complete, so that we have a good year.
There was also a time when I was looking forward to the Spring Festival on the mountain village where I was stationed. The first thing you need to do is to get a good deal of time off from your work, and then you can go and see how the people in the mountains are preparing for the New Year. The richer families invited the pig killer to slaughter the New Year's pig, but on the day of the New Year's Eve, they always had to go to the street to buy a few pounds of meat, to taste a little bit of meat flavor. From time to time, the open mountains will also sound a two firecrackers, accompanied by the farmhouse oboe, bring a little Spring Festival joy.
But for me, the most memorable is the Spring Festival in the provincial city.
Since 1969, I raised my family from the remote cat jumping river valley hydropower station, moved into the provincial city of Guiyang, living in the beautiful scenery of the Qianling Mountain foothills of the slate slope building, although there are still all sorts of life is not as good as it should be, such as the floor of the high tap often have to wait until the middle of the night to come to the water, such as the wife's work almost every day to travel, but the days are calm down, I can However, the days are calm, I can peacefully guard my wife and children, guarding the beautiful scenery of Qianling Mountain and Water, according to the past accumulation of life, and write some things properly. Since the "wasted years", the long novels "in the waking land", "love variations", "tutelage" one by one written out, reflecting the countryside life of the "cornerstone", "tug-of-war", "new wine", "illegitimate children" written out.
Because of the rural theme, I often run to the countryside in Guizhou, ran more than ten counties in Qiannan, ran the northern part of the land, ran during the period I was familiar with the Xiuwen, Xifeng, Kaiyang, I know that often worry about food and clothing in the remote countryside, along with the implementation of the responsibility system of joint production and contracting, the day is better. They can eat white rice, can wear one or two new clothes.
They hung a statue of Deng Xiaoping in their own hall and wished Uncle Deng a long and healthy life. It may be that the first wave of reforms in the countryside took effect, and life in the provincial town has greatly changed. In the days of tickets, people in Guiyang often complained that their families had meat tickets for last year's National Day and had not yet bought meat for this year's May Day. I don't know when, the meat ticket has been abolished, the vegetable market is full of meat, and other foodstuffs are also available in a wide range. People are already shifting from having enough to eating well.
That year's New Year's Eve, I happened to end a middle-aged novel, pushed open the window, walked out onto the balcony, the lights of the mountain city into my eyes, brilliant as a starry night scene as a picture in front of me. As if by appointment, first here and there in the provincial capital, the sound of firecrackers, and then in all parts of the provincial capital, the firecrackers all up, a burst of sudden sound, there are fireworks leaping up into the night sky, fireworks in the near and far flashes, but also interspersed with the dolls screaming:
"New Year's Day, New Year's Day!"
The real joy of the New Year, the real joy of the New Year.
The sound of firecrackers was accompanied by family reunions. The sound of firecrackers is accompanied by the music of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. In the sound of firecrackers, people send off the past year and usher in the New Year full of prayers and blessings.
The provincial city of that New Year's Day, the Spring Festival of 1983, almost did not stop the sudden sound of firecrackers, so much so that the CCTV reported in the "News Broadcast", Guiyang's firecracker sales are the largest, the street outside the South Gate, the light of the New Year's Eve a night, on the entire street, covered with red confetti of fireworks and firecrackers, the cleaners had to work overtime to sweep the street, which know that this news! The firecrackers were heard all night long at the South Gate on the Lantern Festival, making it another piece of news.
Being in the clamor of the incessant sound of firecrackers, I wanted to write a little bit in the whole block of time on the day off, it is not. However, I completely understand, understand the psychology of the New Year, understand the people to finally live a good life, understand the "firecrackers in the sound of the old year", so that the next year is more beautiful prayers.
This is the situation of New Year's Eve in the provincial city more than twenty years ago
Expanded InformationProse is a kind of expression of the author's true feelings, the writing style is flexible narrative genre of literature. The term "prose" probably appeared in the Northern Song Dynasty during the Taipingxingguo (December 976-November 984) period.
The Dictionary of Chinese Literature (辞海), which was published during the Sixth Dynasty of the People's Republic of China (六朝), collectively referred to prose as "散文", in order to differentiate between rhymed texts and parallelism, and all prose texts that did not rhyme or emphasize couplets, including the scriptures, biographies, and history books. Later, it was generalized to refer to all literary genres other than poetry.
With the development of time, the concept of prose changed from a broad to a narrow sense, and was influenced by Western culture.