Editor's Note:
China's Spring Festival travel rush, dubbed the world's largest human migration, usually sees more than 1 billion trips, which brings risks of COVID-19 infection. To curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, China encouraged people to skip returning home and staying put during the Spring Festival holidays. The Global Times reporters spent a special and unforgettable Lunar New Year in Beijing, supporting anti-epidemic efforts.
A community in the Dongcheng district of Beijing organizes residents to make dumplings together on Feb 4, 2021, as many choose to stay near their jobs rather than return to their hometowns for family reunions during the Spring Festival holidays. Photo: cnsphoto
'Having to' stay in Beijing, my foreign friend and I enjoyed a more special and colorful Spring Festival
By Li Qiao
I, with my German friend and several acquaintances, celebrated an unexpectedly colorful Spring Festival this year, staying in Beijing due to the anti-epidemic efforts rather than returning to my hometown as planned.
To be honest, frustration hit me the second I cancelled my flight ticket. After a whole year reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic and witnessing the fragility of life, I missed my parents a lot and cherished any opportunity to reunite with my family, especially during this most important festival.
However, a cluster outbreak hit Wangkui county severely in January, which is only two and a half hours' drive away from my hometown Daqing, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. Heilongjiang has reported more than 520 confirmed COVID-19 infections until February 1.
"Don't come back home this Spring Festival. It is safer to stay in Beijing. Sacrificing a Spring Festival is nothing compared with health, right?" My mom persuaded me not to travel.
My German friend Annika Rodemann, a 29-year-old teacher working at an international school in Beijing, encountered a similar situation.
She planned to visit Harbin, the capital city of Heilongjiang, to enjoy the fantastic ice engravings and ice lanterns during her Spring Festival vacation. The risk of getting infected during the travel and being quarantined after returning to Beijing forced Rodemann to cancel her travel plan and stay in Beijing.
"I was too sad," Rodemann texted me when she made her final decision. Giving up a week-long vacation was painful for such a travel-addicted foreigner who aimed to explore China as much as she could.
Two disappointed persons hit it off and immediately decided to hold a small Spring Festival Eve party, inviting three other friends who also could not return home.
Unexpected fun during staycationOn the morning of Spring Festival Eve, we all dressed in red and got together at the German friend's apartment. Posting Spring Festival couplets, making dumplings, sharing red envelopes with lucky money, exchanging second-hand gifts and watching the Spring Festival Gala, this German woman, who was celebrating the Lunar New Year in China for the first time, said our Spring Festival Eve party in Beijing was super fun, more interesting than spending the festival alone on the road.
"Why everything is red? The decoration, the couplets, envelops and your dress," Rodemann asked me.
"Because the color red symbolizes good luck. Chinese expect good fortune in the coming year," we scrambled to introduce Chinese traditions to this foreign friend. She put on a red suit jacket immediately, saying "I want happiness too."
"Oh my god! Is this pig foot?" the German woman opened her mouth in surprise and picked up a piece of pork trotter with her chopsticks, shouting, "Please take a photo for me eating it! I want to show it to my family in Germany!"
She thought the taste was a little strange, but seeing us tucking into this delicious food, she marveled at the richness of Chinese food culture.
Other than giving money directly, I always prepare thoughtful gifts for my family for the Spring Festival. However, as China's "carbon neutral" ambition hit the world last year, many of my friends are making efforts to reduce unnecessary purchases, achieving a low-carbon life.
We held a second-hand gift exchanging game, refusing to buy new gifts. Each of us brought two unused things to exchange, including dolls, umbrella and even lotion. I was happy that I obtained a glass cup and an eyebrow pencil at last which I really needed.
After the game, Rodemann urged us to make dumplings as she had learned in a cooking class before and couldn't wait to show us.
Put the fillings in the middle of the wrapper, apply water at the edge of the wrapper, fold the wrapper and knead the middle part together first, then stick the other part of the wrapper for three times.
The German made dumplings seriously following precise formula, inspiring us to learn more about traditional Chinese food.
However, her cooking teacher didn't tell her why we put coins inside dumplings. "Our teeth will be broken by the coin," she worried.
When I told her the one who has the dumpling with lucky coin will be the luckiest person in the new year, Rodemann competed with us to scan each dumpling with an eye for good fortune.
I made a video call to my parents for several minutes before the midnight and managed to welcome the new year with them online together.
Watching my parents celebrating the New Year by themselves at home, I felt bad. The residents' anti-epidemic awareness is high in my hometown for the recent outbreak. My parents, aunts and uncles in Daqing did not hold a family reunion on Spring Festival Eve, as they used to, in order to avoid a large gathering.
"I bet it is the first time for my parents to celebrate the Spring Festival with just each other, instead of a big and lively family reunion, in their 54 years of life," I told Rodemann.
That is why you Chinese can control and prevent such a pandemic well, she comforted me.
"Thank you for spending such a colorful Spring Festival and introducing to me so many traditional customs. And thank you to your parents for sacrificing their family reunion to contribute to the anti-epidemic effort," she said, moved.
"I'm confident that the outbreak in your hometown will be controlled soon with all your people's efforts," she noted.
I had the lucky dumpling with coin at last. I was actually lucky to celebrate this colorful Spring Festival in Beijing with friends, and didn't feel lonely at all. And I wish the epidemic can be controlled well in the coming year, so Rodemann and I can travel to Heilongjiang as soon as possible.
Street cleaners dispose of garbage from firecrackers in Shenyang, Liaoning Province in 2017. File Photo: CFP
Why did I feel guilty setting off firecrackers and how has the 'Beat Air Pollution' campaign trained us
By Shan Jie
It lasts exactly 29 seconds. And I feel nothing but guilty and awkward… That's what I felt about my latest experience of setting off firecrackers, on the first day of the Year of Ox.
When the firecrackers begin to bang, it breaks the tranquility of the warm afternoon besides the Yaba (dumb) River in suburban Beijing.
Immediately, white-grey smoke rises from the dusty earth decorated with withered grass. Some red paper scraps fall into the river water nearby.
A passing-by kid on bike shouts: "Look! Someone is setting the firecrackers." And more strangers gather.
My four-year-old niece covers her ears. Her confusion can be read even though the mask covering most of her face.
At the moment, I do not want to get involved into the small whirlpool of attention caused by a string of firecrackers.
Setting off firecrackers is one of the symbolic parts of the Chinese New Year. People believe the sounds of firecrackers could frighten the monster Nian away, together with bad luck.
In my hometown of southwestern Shandong Province, a region proud of its world-known son, Confucius, the ritual was the highlight of the whole Spring Festival. It usually occurred in the early evening of the Chinese New Year eve - when the firecrackers began to bang, dumplings were put into the boiled water.
Besides the banging firecrackers, there were tons of other types of fireworks during the Spring Festival - one that jets colorful sparkles, one that swings crazily on the floor while squeaking like rats, one that shoots away like a rocket, and one that spits a parachute made from a plastic bag…
Days before the Spring Festival, the after-snow muddy street would become an open-air supermarket of fireworks with dozens of merchants displaying the exciting descendants of gunpowder, which was one of the four greatest inventions in ancient China.
These are the golden memories of my childhood, when there were no Legos and tablets and I and other children played outside.
However, as I grew up, the noise of firecrackers subsided gradually. It is not because I am not a child anymore, but because of the new policies in China. Considering pollution and safety issues, setting off firecrackers has been banned in cities across China, including my hometown.
Until this year, in Beijing, it is called "the strictest firework ban in history." City administration department has listed detailed locations that are allowed to set off fireworks, almost all in the suburbs, far away from the city center.
Firecrackers are supplied in limited number in 10 authorized places. In our case, a colleague of my cousin-in-law queued for two hours in Pinggu district to buy them and gave some to us, like they were luxuries.
On the New Year's Day, we drove 30 minutes from our community to the Yaba River for the firecrackers.
We set off the legally bought fireworks at a legal location, but I was upset. The guilt originated self-consciousness. I felt like I was using the privilege of joy to undermine the efforts the whole public has been making.
This is what the 'Beat Air Pollution' campaign has taught me.
On Wednesday, the Beijing Fireworks Office announced that since New Year's Eve, a total of 793 people were caught and discouraged from setting off fireworks, 53 incidents of setting off were investigated and punished, 54 people were fined, and 47 people were injured from fireworks and firecrackers.
When I see my niece, happily shaking her legs along with "Uno" in the Just Dance 2021 on Nintendo Switch, I realize firecrackers will not be something essential in her life to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
Children practice skiing at a ski resort in Luquan District in Shijiazhuang, north China's Hebei Province, Feb. 17, 2021. (Photo by Xu Jianyuan/Xinhua)
My first experience of skiing during the Spring Festival, joining 300 million new comers to winter sports in China
By Lu YamengDue to the recent epidemic outbreak in Beijing, I had to stay and celebrate the Spring Festival without company of family members in Beijing for the first time in my life. Not wanting to be that lonely on Lunar New Year's Eve, I made an appointment with one of my friends who was also in Beijing in advance to celebrate the festival together.
Staying at home, we ate dumplings, waited for the Spring Festival Gala on iPad, and sent greetings and wishes to family members through online chat, wiping tears for missing our families and friends who were far away from Beijing.
However, stepping out of the home, taking a shuttle bus from Beijing's bustling East Third Ring Road to the snow world of Nanshan Ski Resort in suburban area, somehow the courage and passion for experiencing the unknown suddenly came back and I felt like my whole body was refreshed again.
To welcome the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games, China has put forward a goal of having 300 million people familiarized with winter sports by 2022. For me, as one of the 300 million new comers to winter sports, it was the first time that I put on a snowboard, moved my arms and tried to keep balance while I was skiing.
It seemed that my friend and I were not the only young people in Beijing to celebrate the Spring Festival by trying new sports like skiing. Even at the closing time of the afternoon session of the ski resort, there were still many skiers. "I checked in a nearby hotel and planned to ski for a few more days," a young skier told me.
But being a normal worker in Beijing who was left with little money after paying the rent and daily needs for each month, to some extent, skiing was still a kind of luxury for me. The experience nearly costed 1,000 yuan ($154.9) to me and my friend, covering the shuttle bus to ski resort, tickets, renting ski equipment, using cable car and piste, etc. In the following days, I had to reduce expenses and remained tightfisted most of the time.
Having experienced the joy of winter sports for the first time, I became even more enthusiastic about the upcoming Olympic Winter Games in 2022. I definitely can't wait to ski for another time if the cost could be lower, and perhaps more normal people like me would want to try the winter sports in the future as well.