The Spring Festival
Fang Huawen
The first day of the first month in Chinese lunar calendar is Spring Festival, the most important traditional festival, celebrated by Han people and some ethnic minorities in China. Ever since the Emperor Wu’s Reign of Han Dynasty (140 BC) the festival has been regarded as the happiest day. When that day comes, children will set off firecrackers in streets. Even the adults like to bid farewell to the old year and usher in the new. Wang Anshi, a well-known poet of North Song Dynasty, wrote the following verses to vividly portray the joyful atmosphere in the celebration:
Firecrackers are sending the old year away;
People are toasting in warm spring breeze.
All the families are bathed in bright sunlight;
Old couplets are changed with new ones.
Actually, people start to be busy even before Spring Festival comes. They, old and young, whitewash walls and wash the sheets, expecting to greet the new year with everything fresh and clean. Families prepare red bean buns and vegetable buns, not for themselves only, but also for visitors. They all go shopping and keep in storage a lot of delicious food in the home. Or they’ll have a “miserable” Spring Festival as shops are closed then, and the bosses and the assistants will go home to celebrate the festival with their dear ones.
One of the necessary activities during the Spring Festival is to post pictures including the blessing and fortune making types, like a child holding a shoe-shaped gold ingot in his arms or riding on a huge carp, and also including the disaster dispelling or good-luck fetching types, like warrior pictures on the gates and so on. Shen Shu and Yu Lu were brothers who had the power to kill monsters and conquer ghosts as the legend told. So all the households liked to post their pictures on the gates for luck and happiness in Nan Dynasty. In Tang Dynasty, Qin Shubao and Yuchi Jinde were the two most respectable generals among people, and so their pictures were posted on the gates. Even today the generals are still worshiped as gods in many areas of China and their pictures are posted in Spring Festivals to bring auspicious air. In some districts, especially in rural areas, people post Zhong Kui’s pictures on gates to dispel evils and fetch good luck, as it is said, and was appointed “ghost-killer general” by God of all gods after his death, leading 3,000 immortal soldiers to kill monsters and ghosts, enjoying a high fame among people.
