Bing Xin's Chinese New Year Essay 1: Spring Festival of Childhood (excerpt) In my childhood life, there were not only lonely people on the beach and on the mountain, but also noisy times. That was once the "Chinese New Year" and now it is called the "Spring Festival".
At that time, my family lived in the southeast mountain nest behind Yantai Naval School, and there were only a few villages nearby. To enter Yantai, you have to climb a Dongshan Mountain, which is the most secluded corner, but "Chinese New Year" is still the most grand festival of the year.
A few days before the Chinese New Year, my mother was the busiest. She was busy with the new clothes, shoes and hats we wore for the Spring Festival, and the family ate meat for half a month. Because of the custom there, from the first day to the fifteenth day of the first month, pigs are not killed and meat is not sold. I saw my mother wearing an apron and sleeves. In the big jar, she contained a large piece of delicious bad meat wrapped in "red distiller's grains", braised pork cooked with soy sauce, sugar and various seasonings, and steamed several drawers of brown sugar rice cakes. When my mother did these things, not only we greedy children stood by, but also the chef and Ma Yu helped.
For example, father prepares New Year's entertainment for children after school. Not only my cousin, but also my cousin goes to naval school. It's really "a watch is three thousand li". There are at least seven or eight aunts, uncles and cousins. My father bought a set of percussion instruments from Yantai, including gongs, drums, flutes, flutes, erhu and Qin Yue, which were really lively. I just can't get into their band! We can only set off some firecrackers that Dad bought for us during the day and some fireworks at night. The big one is put on the ground, and the silver flowers of the wahoo tree are very bright! My favorite is the smallest and simplest "Didi Jin". It's just a small piece of paper twisted with a little gunpowder, which can be ignited in your hand, making a sneering sound and sparking.
I remember that on the first day of the first lunar month, we got up early, put on new clothes and shoes, worshipped our ancestors first-our family doesn't worship gods-there were only ancestral tablets, incense sticks and sacrifices on the table, and this table of dining tables was our New Year's Eve-and then I gave my parents and elders a New Year's greeting, and I got the lucky money in a red paper bag.
The most interesting thing is to show the "Flower Show" from various rural areas. The actors are all idle farmers in each village in winter. Most of the programs are "Dry Boat Running" and "Aunt Wang's Shovel". The actresses are all young people in the village, and they all wear heavy makeup. Drums lead, followed by many children. When I arrived at my home, a large group of people naturally gathered around, so they dressed up and sang with musical instruments. Most of the songs were funny, which caused everyone to burst into laughter. After the game, we will comfort them with cigarettes, wine and snacks. The flower party in this village has just left, and the one in that village has come again. Naturally, the flower show in the nearest Golden Hook Village is the first!
At the age of eleven, I returned to my hometown of Fuzhou, Fujian, where the Spring Festival was much more lively. In our big family, four rooms live together and eat separately. My grandfather eats with us in this room. Since the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month, people have been busy cleaning houses, scrubbing doors and windows and copper and tin utensils, and preparing bad and pickled chicken, duck and fish. Grandpa is just busy writing Spring Festival couplets and sticking them on polished doors or side doors.
In the new year, each of us gets a lot of good things from his "grandmother's house".
The first is stove candy and stove cake, and it is boxed candy and snacks. It is said to be used to worship the kitchen god. Sugar and snacks are very sweet and sticky. In order to paste the mouth of the kitchen god, he can't report bad things about this family in heaven! The best is lanterns. In Fuzhou dialect, "Deng" and "Ding" are homophonic, so the number of lanterns sent is always more than that of children, which means Jia Ding. At that time, my brothers were too young to compete with me. The extra one is always for me. These lamps: paper, yarn and glass. So I hung a lantern on the wall at home, and the picture on it was "Three British Wars against Lu Bu". I have a goldfish lamp with movable eyes in my hand and a white rabbit lamp with wheels at my feet in the other hand.
After the Lantern Festival, the annual Glory Day is over. The adults asked us to put a lot of lanterns together and burn them. They said:
"Starting from tomorrow, I will go to school." We listened quietly and looked at the stars embers of those lanterns in the yard, which made us feel unspeakable melancholy and loneliness. When we went to bed, the taste of the night was really terrible!
Bing Xin (1900- 1999), a modern essayist, poetry translator and "social activist" in China, was originally named Xie Wanying from Changle, Fujian.
Bing Xin's New Year Essay 2: Warm Taste of the Year In childhood's New Year memories, there are always three things: wearing new clothes, eating jiaozi and setting off firecrackers. But there is a Spring Festival that has nothing to do with these three things. Every time I think about it, I can't stop crying.
When I was in junior high school, I was catching up with the "natural disaster" for three years. My grandmother was alone in her hometown in rural Henan, and sent messages to people many times, saying that she missed her grandson so much that she asked me to go back to my hometown during the winter vacation at school anyway. So my aunt asked me to go back to my hometown with my cousin Yi Bin who is three years older than me.
In the early 1960s, the traffic in China was very backward. We took the train from Bengbu to Zhengzhou, then transferred to Gongxian (now gongyi city) by a stuffy tanker, walked dozens of miles, crossed the Yellow River and arrived at Hecun on the north bank. Grandma saw her only grandson, needless to say, but the most embarrassing thing for her is that the year is approaching. What should she give her grandson?
At that time, * * * and China were in the year of famine, and the situation of not having enough to eat on weekdays was everywhere. What can we do at the end of the year? At that time, rations were distributed in rural areas according to the number of work points. Although my grandmother is only 58 years old, it is not difficult to figure out how many work points she can earn a year with her single grandmother and palm-sized feet.
I don't remember some specific details of that year, but two things have been rooted in my memory and will never be forgotten.
On the morning of New Year's Day, I opened the door and saw the yard was white. Snowflakes floating all night wrapped the world in a thick layer of snow, but I immediately found that two lines of footprints were left on the ground in front of the house from the door left unlocked in the yard. I immediately shouted: "Grandma, come and see! Someone in our family has been here. "
My grandmother came to the yard with me. After all, she is a sharp-eyed child. She soon discovered that there was a black blue woven with rattan on the windowsill of our house, covered with a rough hand-woven primary color cloth that was common in rural areas in those days.
"grandma! Come and see what this is? " Open the coarse cloth covered with rattan blue. There are four steamed bread with mixed noodles, four sweet potatoes, two pieces of dry powder skin and a small piece of pork.
Without saying anything, grandma quickly pulled me into the house, closed the door, put down the basket, looked at the stove in the corner, folded her hands and muttered to herself. Then he said happily, "Master Zao knows that my grandson is back and sent a bodhisattva to send you new year's goods."
Although nearly sixty years have passed, it has been deeply rooted in my memory and cannot be erased. Although I was too young to understand the cause and effect behind this incident, I never believed grandma's explanation. Later, with the growth of my age, I began to understand that at that time, because my grandmother was a landlord, in that special year with "class struggle" as the key link, someone would dare to take the world by storm and send a warm "flavor of the year" to our lonely grandparents and grandchildren in that snowy winter.
Nowadays, whenever the Spring Festival comes, when the family gets together and enjoys the delicious food on the table, I can't help but recall the memory that seems far away and feels close, and has been kept in my heart for a long time. This memory is full of bitterness and bitterness, but it still shines with the brilliance of humanity and kindness, which makes me cry because of being moved. It makes me cherish the happiness in front of me, and it also adds a different flavor to my annual Spring Festival.