Celebrating the Festival

As soon as I saw the title, I thought of Bei Dao’s poem “Celebrating the Festival”:

The glass is clear and bright, The oranges are shining.

Regardless of what mood Bei Dao was in when he wrote this line, it conveys both longing and hope, as well as irony and helplessness.

However, this post is just about recording this year’s Spring Festival.

Going Home

I went home on December 29th. I originally thought that there would be a lot of people going home this year for the holiday season, so high-speed train tickets might be hard to come by. Therefore, I bought my ticket back home very early (on January 6th according to 12306), but only managed to get one that goes all the way to Qingdao instead of a direct one.

At that time, a friend invited me to go reminisce about our youth at a bar in Wudaokou. However, since I suffer from crowd anxiety (I’m fine with people I know but feel really uncomfortable around too many strangers - think university cafeterias or crowded subway stations during peak hours like at Jintai Road station which gave me particularly bad experiences), so I declined.

But we talked about going home for Chinese New Year then and there. So while checking out train tickets online later on, I found out that direct tickets were sold out already but there were still some available for Qingdao. So without much hesitation, I booked those instead.

However closer to the actual holiday period itself when looking again at ticket availability online once more revealed plenty of direct ones left after all! So eventually ended up cancelling my original booking and rebooking another direct one instead.

When arriving back home in Shandong province later on in afternoon time , even before entering through our front door , our family’s little dog started barking at me. But as soon as I stepped inside, he stopped (guess he still recognized me).

Chinese New Year

It had been two years since I last went home for the holiday season, so it felt a bit strange this time around. On New Year’s Eve, there were lots of fireworks outside and in the background of watching CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala show (although not really paying much attention to it), I watched an episode of “The Three-Body Problem”. As someone who usually stays up late into the night, it was rare that I actually felt sleepy.

On the first day of the new year, my younger sister (my godmother’s daughter) came over to our house. At five-and-a-half years old she is at that age where children can be quite mischievous but personally I just find her very cute. She loves going to play with my grandmother and I remember when she was even smaller than now (less than two years old perhaps?), she would call me “big brother” in her childish voice while still unsteady on her feet walking around - if given a chance myself one day ,I’d also like to have a daughter.

Then various aunties came over here too to see my grandmother and we took some family photos together.

We talked about my cousins’ jobs (they are all teachers). My cousin has a particularly good personality; always able to keep conversations flowing smoothly without any awkward silences whereas ever since high school days onwards another cousin became more reserved and spoke less often. This year everyone gathered together again playing card games such as “Emperor” which Shandong people enjoy during their leisure time.

Ever since that year when I stopped setting off firecrackers during Chinese New Year celebrations, its festive atmosphere has faded somewhat for me personally but this isn’t because there is no longer any festive atmosphere anymore per se - rather simply put, the happiest person during this time of year is no longer me.

Chinese New Year has become a holiday that cannot compare to Labor Day or National Day for me. After all, I don’t feel any pressure to visit relatives and friends on May 1st or October 1st so it’s really just about going home to see my parents and then taking a few days off to relax afterwards.

Due to the COVID-19 situation in Beijing last year, not having gone back home for two years made this Chinese New Year more enjoyable than usual as there were fewer worries. I could cook whatever food I wanted, didn’t have to wake up early in the morning if I didn’t want to and could sit quietly by the window with some sunflower seeds while listening to music.

Return to Beijing

Last year, a friend bought a house and I asked my dad to help him frame a calligraphy piece. However, due to the COVID-19 lockdown in 2022, I couldn’t bring it back home (it wasn’t suitable for delivery). When I returned home this year, I found out that someone else had taken it.

Unable to do anything about it, my dad helped me find an older piece (which he also framed), with the content being Yang Shen’s “The Immortal at River’s Edge”.

After returning home and tidying up my place, I’m ready to start working on what comes next!

If we observe things as they are in constant transformation, we will see that heaven and earth cannot be grasped even for an instant; if we observe things as they are unchanging, both ourselves and all things around us are boundless.