Chinese New Year in my eyes

Updated: 2015-03-11 16:21

During the evening of New Year’s Eve, families sit together in their living rooms to watch the Chinese Spring Festival gala, a TV show which reunites the most famous singers, dancers and TV stars showing their performances during the night. This amazing show will be in the news and everybody will talk about it for many days, extending the New Year feeling even longer.

Since the following day, the New Year’s holiday becomes a kind of marathon where every single meal is at a different place: “Today at noon with my grandparents, at night at my uncle's house, tomorrow with my cousins...”. This is what I heard from my friends and kept us running from one place to the following one without enough time to rest or even to feel hungry between meals. If the families meet at a restaurant, they share a big table with a 'you-can-move' disk in the center so everyone can reach every plate.

During the meals also there are some rituals and traditions. Right before the food is served, all the children and young people receive a red envelope as a present from their older relatives. Although this envelope mainly contain a card with a wish of good luck, in all cases there is some money inside and all the children keep all the envelopes next to them on the table to show how many of them they received during the whole holiday. It is good fun to see how these red envelopes and cellphones share the same space on the table, as everybody continuously shares pictures showing their friends what delicious food they are having.

It is really a wonderful experience to spend Chinese New Year in Xi’an. Hopefully everyone will have the opportunity to discover a Chinese New Year with their own eyes.