Chinese New Year is very important for Chinese people. People prepare everything carefully for the New Year. Maybe Cantonese’s traditions are a little different from that of other parts of China. We clean up the houses several days before New Year’s Eve, and then decorate the house to welcome the Chinese New Year. There are lanterns hung around the house, the paper-cuts and couplets pasted on the windows, doors or walls, and you can also see many kinds of flowers blooming in the vases. We brought a lot of foods, fruit, candy, sweet dried fruits and other items to celebrate Chinese New Year.
On the Chinese New Year’s Eve, we had a
big dinner; there were at least six dishes: chicken, meat, seafood and
different kind of vegetables on the table. The whole family sat around the
table to eat dinner. First, we ate chicken, Fa-chai, oysters, meat, then
vegetable. We toasted and said Goodbye to the old year, and welcomed the New
Year. We wished everybody good luck, good health and wealth in the coming
new year. After dinner, we served tangerines, oranges; candy and sweet dried
fruit so that people can choose their favorite items to eat.
On the New Year’s Day, first, we exchanged greetings with each other, had some candies or sweet dried fruits, then parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts gave red envelopes to children, . After that, we went to the Buddhists Temple, it’s in Chinatown, we kneeled on the pad in front of the God and pray, and then had vegetable there.
When we enter Chinatown, I saw a lot of
people paraded on the streets, I saw lion dance and dragon dance, I heard
gong, drum and folk song around Chinatowns. Some people were wearing
costumes and performing the traditional plays. There was also martial arts
show which attracted
plenty of people to watch. Chinatown was crowded with
Chinese people and visitors of others of other ethnic groups. We have many
superstitious rules for the 15 days of Chinese New Year. After 15 days all
the rules ended; we are relaxed and we can do anything without having to
follow these rules. On the 15th day, we had another big dinner,
at that night there were a lot of lantern show in China. We saw on TV people
were singing and dancing. They seemed to be enjoying the occasion.
My First Pen Pal
By Biming Long
I had my first pen pal in the 1950s when I was only 10 still studying in elementary school. Shortly after the founding of the new China, the Korean War broke out and China soon entered the war, and many Chinese troops were sent to Korea. People across the whole nation regarded the Chinese soldiers in Korea patriotic heroes and vied with each other in writing to them, expressing their admiration and appreciation. By the time I got a soldier’s name and address, I had never written to anyone before. My mother said, “This isn’t an ordinary letter, you must be serious about it.” Then she taught me how to write a letter. After a few drafts, the letter was completed and sent to the soldier. I can still remember the soldier’s name was Chen, Lixin.
About one month later, his reply came. With joy I opened the letter and read it to my family. “Dear Brother Biming (Guess my name sounded like a man’s so I was mistaken as a man):”the letter said, “I am so pleased to receive your letter from my motherland.” I asked my mother, “Why did he call me ‘brother’?” Mom smiled and said, “because you are as naughty as a boy!”
In his letter, Linxin praised me that I could write such a good letter and that I must have been a hard-working student. At the end of the letter, he asked me not to call him “Uncle Chen”. “I’m not old enough to be your uncle,” he said, “I want you to treat me as your elder brother.” Therefore, in my reply to his letter, I called him “Dear Brother Chen”. I also enclosed a photo of me.
Soon, I got his reply. “Dear Biming, my little sister,” he said, “I had thought you are a cute boy. I hadn’t expected you are a lovely girl…” In fact, it wasn’t his fault. My name does sound like more like a boy’s name. In the letter he also enclosed a photo of himself. He was young with a round baby face, and childish smile. In the following letters I wrote to him, I wrote more about my study, my classmates, my favorite subjects and books at school.
From his letters, I learned about the hard life of a soldier in the battlefields on the foreign soil: sleeping in the cold trenches, eating cookies and canned food. “The sky is my quilt, the ground is my bed” he said. In his letters, he also revealed his homesickness. “I miss my family and relatives.” he said. He also told me that he wished to go back to school and finish his study when the war was over.
I didn’t realize then that it was the last letter I got from him. I never received any more letters from him, not even after the war was over and all the Chinese troops returned to China. Most likely, the young man had lost his life in the war and would stay in the land he fought for forever.
He will, however, always live in my memory although, unfortunately, I lost his letters during my family’s too many times of moving from one place to another. I will never forget his round baby face, so young, so innocent looking.