My first Chinese New Year experience began a couple of weeks after I arrived in the country. I was excited, Chinese New Year in my imagination was a carnival of dragon puppets, fireworks and celebrations. I couldn’t believe my luck at arriving just in time to witness it.
I learned to never assume anything about anywhere ever again. Chinese New Year is in fact the complete opposite to my baseless fantasies.
Chongqing fell asleep for two weeks. In actual fact, Chinese New Year (or ‘Spring Festival’) is a holiday when everyone returns to wherever it is they are from. It turns out that nobody is from Chongqing. The 30-million-person city became barren overnight as the holiday period began, leaving a handful of city dwelling, Chongqing locals and some of the non-Chinese population who foolishly decided against booking a trip abroad.
Chongqing is an up-and-coming city and, like many cities full of working opportunities, it is chock full of migrants. Be they from the Chinese countryside or elsewhere across the country, the city population of Chongqing plummets every Spring Festival.
The working holiday for Spring Festival is around a week, sometimes more depending on how the calendar falls. Children are off school for around a month. It was a great opportunity to travel, but only if you went abroad. Travelling in China during the festive period is ferocious. The largest, annual, migration of people in the world is a terrible time to see that famous, tourist spot you wanted to check out. Annual leave is a rarity in China, so for Chinese workers, the new year could be one of, if not the only opportunity in twelve months that they are able to spend time with their families. Train stations and airports are awash with bodies, bodies that have no problem with shoving if it gets them on their flight, train or bus quicker. It’s hard to not feel for the staff tasked with battling these swathes of people.
My latter Spring festivals were fairly legit. In 2019 I went back to Rebecca’s hometown, Yinchuan. Yinchuan is way up north and it’s cold. Really damn cold. I fancied my Chinese skills after a year in the country, but this confidence was swiftly dissolved upon meeting Rebecca’s parents and, later, her extended family. I was a nervous mess, occasionally spitting out a “hello” or a “thank you” and rarely braving to push any further. Meeting your girlfriend’s family is a nerve-wracking experience at the best of times. Being unable to speak the same language as them was a whole other plateau.
I would return to Yinchuan yearly after that with my Chinese and my confidence improving incrementally each time, but I was nonetheless distressed by each visit. In reality, there was nothing to worry about; the occasionally awkward chatter that pushed my language skills to their limits was endured and I forged a decent relationship with my Chinese family. I was always welcomed with open arms. I enjoyed some incredible Chinese home-cooking and absurdly thoughtful gifts.
Chinese New Year isn’t so much about gifts as it is about cash. Kids don’t get excited about gifts under the tree, instead they have eyes only for the red envelopes filled with cash in grandmas’ and uncles’ pockets. Money makes its way around tables and family members. It seemed to me that money exchanging events are dotted across the Chinese calendar periodically so that, by the end of the year, most people eventually end up with the same amount that they started with.
The bones of Spring Festival become quickly apparent after spending just a few hours inside a real one. It’s about spending time with family, eating vast amounts of food and usually drinking alcohol. Holiday traditions, no matter where you are in the world all seem to have that central commonality of family and love. Like Christmas, the amount that you enjoy the holiday depends very much on who you share it with and less what you are actually celebrating.
Chinese New Year was not what I expected it to be. Though my experiences were mingled with anxious bouts of trying to break down language barriers, I learned to enjoy the quirks and can proudly say that I’ve experienced as legitimate a Spring Festival as any non-Chinese person can.
Christmas is still better though.
