Chinese-English translation of Jiangxi New Year customs

New Year’s custom in Jiangxi

“After eating Laba rice, we celebrate the new year.” The New Year is not a day on New Year’s Eve, but a period. For the "New Year", people have to make a lot of preparations to exaggerate the long-awaited flavor of the New Year: "On the twenty-third, worship at Zaoguan, on the twenty-fourth, sweep the house, on the twenty-fifth, paste the windows, on the twenty-sixth Steaming steamed buns, killing fat chickens at twenty-seven, making magnetic cakes at twenty-eight, frying and stewing them at twenty-nine. "Everything is done according to traditional procedures, so these days the neighbors are enjoying the fragrance in every house. When they see you passing by their house, most people will enthusiastically ask you to come in and try the freshly fried meatballs. The children will use bamboo skewers to skewer meatballs, fishballs, sweet potato balls, etc. to try each other's new items. At the same time, they will count on their fingers. The Chinese New Year is just a few days away.

New Year’s Eve is finally here. Everyone in the family got up early, and even the chickens and dogs were happier than usual. They and their owners were preparing to celebrate the New Year.

According to custom, women go into the kitchen to prepare New Year's dinner, and it is the men's job to make glutinous rice and paste couplets. When posting couplets, you must first paste them in the main room. Although the content of the couplets changes every year, they always have the same words every year. First, paste the horizontal scroll with the word "福星高智", and also pay attention to the upper and lower couplets. The right is the top and the left is Second line, otherwise others will laugh. Next, stick them on the doors of each room, and then stick some vertical "small stickers": "Everything is good, good luck when you open the door" is posted on the door of the main house, and "No taboos, everything goes well" is posted on the main wall of the main house. On the top of the page, "A good harvest and prosperous livestock" is attached to the barn and the cow, pig and chicken pens, and "Beware of the candle" is attached to the kitchen. The gate or courtyard door is posted last. When passers-by see that the new couplets are posted on the gate, they know that the family is preparing for the New Year's dinner.

The New Year's dinner in hometown is usually eaten at noon. It is about saying goodbye to the old year and seeing who eats the New Year's dinner first. Early New Year's Eve heralds that "the plan for the year lies in spring, and hard work will bring good harvest." At around 11 o'clock, the sound of firecrackers in the village starts one after another, one after another, lasting for more than 2 hours. In rural areas, there are also specialties in setting off firecrackers during the New Year's dinner, which means to avert disaster and eliminate evil (in fact, the smoke produced by firecrackers is very important in the damp countryside. It can play a sterilizing effect in the weather), so the firecrackers cannot be turned off for a short time in the middle. The faster, denser and louder the firecrackers are, the more prosperous they will be in the coming year. After setting off the New Year's firecrackers and playing cheerful music, the whole family began to have a reunion dinner.

However, the customs of eating New Year’s dinner are also different. One of my neighbors’ family moved from Hubei. We all call him “Jianmanzi”, which probably means unkind and too lazy. The New Year’s dinner is the same as the New Year’s Eve dinner. eat. They celebrate the New Year every year in the evening, with the crackling of cannons, and people from far away laugh and say: "The Manzi family is celebrating their 'twilight years'".

After the New Year’s dinner, there is still division of labor. Women still have to go into the kitchen to mix noodles, chop dumpling fillings, and make dumplings. Men have to bring axes, saws and hoes and go up the mountain to collect "wealth". They have to chop down a big tree and dig up the roots to use as "firewood" to keep the year old. The fire pond lit with this tree will keep burning until the end of the year. On the morning of the first day of the Lunar New Year, it is "Fire and Wealth". The period after saying goodbye to the New Year and welcoming the New Year is the time spent by the children. They take out the firecrackers that have been prepared and make the whole village lively.

Eating New Year’s Eve dinner in the evening is about keeping the year old and welcoming the New Year. This process starts with the first pot of dumplings being cooked in the evening. The whole family still sits together to eat reunion dumplings. After eating the dumplings, they have to make dumplings. , which was preparing food for the first day of the new year. Everyone either watched TV or played small cards (mahjong), waiting patiently for the clock to strike 12 o'clock.

When there are more than 10 minutes before 12 o'clock, the village neighbors begin to set off some short whips or single-shot firecrackers to warm up the atmosphere. The men coiled their long whips for welcoming the New Year on bamboo poles and waited for the ignition signal. CCTV would count down at this time, and everyone would stand up together and chant loudly: "5, 4, 3, 2, light the fire!" "At this time, the whole village could hear no other sound except the sound of firecrackers. Everyone competed with whose firecrackers had the longest and loudest sound. After setting off the long whip to welcome the new year, fireworks and firecrackers began to appear. This family plays "Nine Beads Reunion", that family plays "Earth Spring Thunder", this family's colorful bead fireworks fly like meteors diagonally to other people's courtyards, that family is not to be outdone and immediately responds with a few blasts. The fight got fierce and the fireworks lasted for more than an hour. After the fireworks were fired, the children climbed up the wall of the courtyard and watched the fire from across the courtyard.

It wasn’t until almost one o’clock in the night that the sound of the cannons gradually faded away.

According to local customs, the night of the New Year's Eve must not be dark. Every house must light up all night, and all houses, including bedrooms, must be lit up to light the way home for those who are still running around outside during the New Year. It also heralds a bright future in the coming year, so no matter how poor the family is, the electricity bill cannot be saved this night.

Year after year. The year just drifts away in the traditional tight and urgent process, in the brightly lit night, and in the snoring dreams of people's excitement and exhaustion.

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