Letter from Boston
Chinese Spring Festival
By MASAKO YAMADA
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中国の春祭り
雅子さんは、日本の読者からの、節分の日の面白い風習についての電子メールをもらいました。節分は立春の前夜です。さらに、クラスメートの中国人学生から旧正月を祝う電子メールを受け取った雅子さんは、中国の春祭りは「春節」と書く、と教えてもらい、節分と春祭りの間には関係があることに気づきました…。
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On the day before "setsubun-no-hi," one of my readers e-mailed me and told me that it was lucky to eat "futomaki" while facing north-northwest. I thought
that was interesting, but that holiday never meant much
to me. During the same week, I got a very fancy
e-mail message from one of my Chinese classmates saying "Happy Chinese New Year: February
7th!!" I've known for a long time that the Chinese follow the traditional lunar
calendar, and that their new year always starts a little later than the Gregorian new year does, but I've never connected that with setsubun-no-hi.
It was only after another
Chinese classmate, Qizhi, told me that the holiday was called "Spring Festival" that the
pieces started falling into place. He wrote the characters for "Spring Festival" out for me ― they are the same as
those for "shun-setsu" ― and that's when I realized that the holidays are the same. However, Qizhi
told me that Spring Festival is the most important holiday of the year in China. This is
very different from the case in Japan, where New Year's Day is observed on January 1st.
I'm not really sure when the Japanese started observing
the solar calendar, and, hence, started to
celebrate New Year's Day on January 1st. It certainly goes against the classical literature of
Japan. I do remember that when I was in junior high school, we had to read different
haiku and try to determine the season in which they belonged. We learned then that the
"current" January, February and March are "classically" considered to be part of spring. In other words, a New Year's Day haiku, indeed, heralds the
arrival of spring.
The history of calendars notwithstanding, the Chinese Spring Festival i.e. New Year's Day is an important holiday to the
Chinese living in the States. I've had a lot of Chinese friends (mostly Chinese-American,
Taiwanese or Cantonese) in college, so I've seen them hold parties
and dinners among themselves, but the festival's significance is
especially apparent to me now, since 1/3 of my
classmates are directly from mainland China.
Qizhi told me that this was the first time in his life he'd spent Spring Festival away
from home. He went to Peking University, the prestigious
national university of China, but for Spring Festival, he told me that he always went
back home to his small village in central China. He told me he missed that friendly atmosphere.
I went to Boston Chinatown a few hours before
midnight on "Spring Festival Eve." There were lots of women carrying large bags of groceries, and little children setting off firecrakers in the streets. There are stores
in Chinatown that sell fresh chickens (you point to a
cackling hen,
and they kill it for you), and I've read a news
article that said that they are especially busy during Spring Festival.
Some animal rights groups have started to crack down on such stores in San Francisco, though, and
the Boston storeowners are starting to worry about
the effects of this movement. It's well known that the Chinese love good
food, so it's understandable that they'd want fresh
meat if possible, but one Chinese woman also mentioned that dead ancestors and gods above would never accept a frozen, plastic-wrapped chicken with no head and feet.
Such
debate over "cultural
issues" never seems to cease.
At one of the
large American supermarkets near my home, I saw signs
around the Chinese food section saying "Celebrate Chinese New Year: The Year of the Ox!!"
That supermarket also sells futomaki, but I didn't see any signs saying "Celebrate
Setsubun-no-hi"....
Shukan ST: Feb. 21, 1997
(C) All rights reserved
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