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My Lunar New Year
Updated: 2015-03-06 15:10
By Kevinfly
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A photo of my New Year’s Eve dinner. |
Chinese New Year, also called the Spring Festival, is the grandest and the most important festival for Chinese people. Chinese New Year has a long history. In ancient times, people celebrated this festival for the advent of spring and a bumper harvest in the next year, but now it is more important for family members to get together.
To my understanding, Spring Festival is another form of happiness. When Spring Festival approaches, all my family members go home and spend one week together; it is the most happy time of each year. People from different regions celebrate the Lunar New Year in their unique ways, but in my mind, the most important things we always do during Spring Festival are "having New Year's Eve dinner", "watching the Spring Festival Gala" and "wearing new cloths".
On the night of New Year's Eve, my mom always makes so many dishes of delicious food for us. After she puts all the dishes on the dinner table and all family members are present at the table, we start our New Year's Eve dinner. As to the food for New Year's Eve dinner, there are some customs. For example, almost every family will cook fish for this special dinner - people call it "nian nian you yu（年年有鱼）". Chinese people call fish "yu", it sounds like another Chinese word meaning "prosperous", so we believe that eating fish on New Year's Eve represents that we can be wealthy and prosperous in the next year. Besides fish, we eat dumplings too. Dumplings are a kind of food stuffed with meats and vegetables. It is so happy when the whole family sits together to make dumplings and talks. On the other hand, it is said that the shape of the dumplings resemble gold ingots, so eating dumplings also could call wealth into our life.
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