About the concept of LOHAS~?

Lohas, also known as Lohas, Lohasism, and Lohas, is an emerging lifestyle group from the West. It is derived from the transliteration of LOHAS. LOHAS is the English Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability. The abbreviation of means living a healthy and self-sufficient life.

LOHAS is composed of the first letter of each English word in the sentence "lifestyles of health and sustainability". That is, “a healthy, sustainable lifestyle.” "Health, happiness, environmental protection and sustainability" are the core concepts of LOHAS. Because the LOHAS concept conforms to the general trend of social development, the LOHAS lifestyle has long been popular in developed countries in Europe and the United States, but it has just begun to become popular in China.

In today's increasingly abundant material world, a totem ritual such as the Spring Festival has gradually lost its traditional folklore core. As an increasingly simplified symbol, what remains is only a very simple and clear referent. That is: LOHAS - live happily.

Happiness is a belief, happiness is a way of living, happiness is an experience - in China, the Spring Festival is the Lohas Festival.

From rituals, eating and drinking to having fun

The Spring Festival is the Lohas Festival

The forms of celebrating the Spring Festival have changed with the progress of the times, but only the symbolic form has changed , what remains unchanged is the Chinese people’s happiness-first spirit.

Those who are a little older and have a little experience can easily understand the changes in the way Chinese people celebrate the New Year in recent decades: the era of eating meat and wearing new clothes; Era; you can eat when you want, sleep when you want, and play when you want, so you can find fun in an eclectic era. As the material basis of the Spring Festival continues to change, the traditional customs and customs of the New Year are increasingly evolving into a symbol of happiness, so that "as long as you are happy, celebrate the New Year every day" has become the mantra and life philosophy of many people.

Happy compensation in the era of material shortages

The Chinese New Year is always happy and happy, but the happier the Chinese New Year is, the more it often reflects the scarcity of ordinary happiness.

A netizen born in the 1960s recalled in a blog that the most impressive thing he did when he was a child was helping his parents wait in line. In the 1970s when supplies were in short supply, people were queuing up all over the country to buy vegetables and meat. The Chinese New Year meant "rush buying." In order to grab a sumptuous New Year's Eve dinner, people had to fight with patience and physical strength. Regarding the Spring Festival, "eating" news is always the headline in newspapers, from "ample supply of grain, oil, and meat" to "large quantities of live chickens and ducks on the market" to "chocolate and biscuits on the market." Clothes such as Liang and Gabardine in department stores have also become top-notch items for people to wear during the New Year. Su Tong wrote in "Women's Clothing" that at that time, as long as a girl wore a white "Chenliang" skirt, she would "attract the sideways glances of older women and men."

Not only do you have to rush to buy things, but even watching model operas, revolutionary songs and dances, and revolutionary movies, the only entertainment activities during the Spring Festival, must be organized to allocate tickets or "purchase restrictions." After 1977, the Spring Festival atmosphere became lively, with temple fairs, dances, and cultural evenings. Domestic films such as "Ashima" and "The Peach Blossom Fan" reappeared, and Hong Kong and foreign films such as "Three Smiles" and "Pursuit" also appeared one after another. , being able to watch a movie is a spiritual luxury. Hu Mei, the director of "Qiao's Courtyard" once recalled that young people at that time had the experience of running around the city for most of the night because of watching "internal movies". She also witnessed a boy climbing up the window to watch foreign movies. The tragedy of being thrown to death inspired the idea that "I must make my own movie."

The long queues for buying and the rare spiritual luxury did not affect people’s enthusiasm for the festival. The lanterns, firecrackers, and facial masks that children love to play with must be bought. The bell-bottoms and pop song tapes that young people love are indispensable. The procedures for adults to make dumplings, give out lucky money, and pay New Year greetings to each other are indispensable. The material guarantee of adequate food and clothing directly affects the reunion. A sense of warmth and stable happiness.

The transition from eating and drinking to having fun

"In 1984, February 16, Lunar New Year's Eve. At the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, Hong Kong and Taiwan singers first met, "My Chinese Heart" It sings the hearts of the people of Hong Kong and Taiwan who love the motherland, and I applaud it," an old man from Liaoning Province wrote in a diary of the 66 Spring Festivals he spent.

In 1983, the first live broadcast of the Spring Festival Gala became an instant hit, and color TVs immediately became a hot commodity. Chen Peisi's naive attitude of "eating noodles" created a craze for sketches that continues to this day. The song "Unforgettable Tonight" almost became the closing song of every subsequent gala, and the Spring Festival Gala became a conventional symbol of the Spring Festival. It’s the same New Year’s Eve dinner, but the meaning of “eating” is different.

As for Chinese people’s traditional way of celebrating the New Year, the way of eating is also quietly changing. In the mid-1990s, the red “Closed for Spring Festival” notices at the entrance of restaurants suddenly disappeared en masse, and it became fashionable to go to restaurants for New Year’s Eve dinner. Cantonese cuisine, Sichuan cuisine, Hunan cuisine, hot pot... Merchants have launched distinctive signs to attract customers.

The dining table is getting richer and more varied, and people who are full of food and wine are beginning to find more fun besides eating. It has become a trend to take off the black, gray and blue coat and put on beautiful jackets, jeans, and fur coats during the Spring Festival. It has also become a trend to rent suits in photo studios for photos. The British "Guardian" on April 14, 1980 even commented on this Report. Beginning on the eve of the Spring Festival in 1985, individuals were limited to purchasing one imported camera, and it became a pleasure to take a New Year family photo by yourself. Refrigerators and washing machines have entered the home, solving the problems that housewives have been troubled by during the New Year cleaning and food storage.

When more cultural gifts such as New Year's cards and wall calendars replaced the thermos bottles and washbasins that were previously used as gifts, the Spring Festival couplets originally posted in farmyards were also posted in unit buildings in the city. Compared with the old Spring Festival couplets that only seek peace and happiness, phrases full of the flavor of the times such as "The new Long March begins in bright spring, and modernization begins with joyful golden drums" are more popular. People who have just lived a good life and are looking forward to the future are full of joyful symbols of the Spring Festival. Zhao Zhongxiang was asked in an interview to use an adjective to describe the expressions of people in the 1980s. He used Guo Lanying's song "The Laughter is Sweet in the Dreams of Commune Members" as an analogy, "I think the expressions of people in that period were like that in their dreams." The laughter is sweet. ”

Upgrading play and the evolution of fun

A survey in 1994 showed that eating and drinking is no longer the theme of the New Year, and people spend less on food. 1/5 of the money spent during the Spring Festival, and 1/3 was spent on socializing and entertainment. The five young people who went to Harbin together during the Spring Festival were still newsmakers in 1992, but in 1996, after the Spring Festival was changed to a seven-day holiday , the number of people traveling during the New Year has skyrocketed, domestic routes are full, the Spring Festival has transformed from the off-season of tourism into a "golden week", and the practice of offering a 50% discount on air tickets during the Spring Festival has gone down in history.

The revolutionary significance of traveling to celebrate the New Year in eliminating the symbolic meaning of the Spring Festival reunion custom was actually only realized later. What people noticed from the beginning was that "good health" became the most commonly used New Year blessing in the 1990s through paging, phone calls, postcards, voice messages and song requests. The "Spring Festival Gala" still started on time, but the birth of mainland China's first true New Year film in 1997 gave people new excitement. Feng Xiaogang's "Party A and Party B" entertained the masses and aroused expectations for New Year's films every year.

The emergence of SMS New Year greetings as a "new folk custom" after 2000 has once again refreshed the traditional interpersonal network. According to statistics, more than 85% of people used text messages to send New Year greetings in 2006, and the number of New Year greeting text messages nationwide reached 12 billion.

In line with this, children who are busy working overtime or living abroad can video chat with their families just by sitting in front of the computer; single people who can go home but are worried about not having a partner can rent a "lover" by opening a web page. "Meeting my parents; it's freezing and I don't want to do the cleaning, so I call a part-time worker to solve it all; it's not easy to put up New Year pictures and Spring Festival couplets in an IKEA-style room, but buying a Q version of the zodiac doll can also add joy; if you have a car, you can't go on a self-driving trip. If you want to go to the countryside by car to experience farmhouse fun; if rushing to a dinner party is too hard, you might as well just turn off the game on your mobile phone.

The Spring Festival no longer has a traditional form and a fixed sense of ritual and folklore core. As an increasingly simplified symbol, it leaves only a very simple and clear referent, that is: happily Life. It’s no wonder that some experts have loudly called for the protection of the Spring Festival in recent years. Although there are many people with different opinions, the connotation of “LOHAS” is everyone’s basic common sense. Feng Jicai, a writer with unique insights into folk customs, said that those who are indifferent to the flavor of the New Year only talk about the decline of some traditional New Year customs, mistakenly taking the flavor of the New Year customs and the appearance of the New Year as the core of the New Year, and confuse the interpretation form of the Spring Festival symbols with the Spring Festival. The humanistic connotation of symbols. Although now 1,000 people can have 1,000 ways to celebrate the New Year, in fact, what everyone wants is happiness.

China Lohas Declaration

1. Have a DIY spirit. Install your own furniture (bought from IKEA), grind your own coffee (produced by Starbucks), listen to your own songs (go to KTV to sing), and open a restaurant in your own home (private cooking between yourself and your relatives).

2. Write less blogs and text messages, and stay away from the Internet and chat tools. Remember, chat logs, mobile email, and blog search engines all present hidden dangers.

3. Learn more inefficient ways to make friends. Although it is old-fashioned to watch TV, drive tractors, and talk with family and friends, long-distance phone calls, coffee shops, and dinner tables can enhance relationships better than text messages.

4. Live an organic life. Pay attention to the environmental protection of your body and refuse junk food; pay attention to the environmental protection of the earth and refuse to litter. Picking out an exquisite shopping bag to bring with you can bring you a good mood at any time.

5. Learn to find happiness in others. After spending 2 hours of boring time, you can laugh at and discuss blockbusters; similarly, always pay attention to people who create entertainment such as Song Zude, Wang Shuo and Wu Zongxian.

6. Learn to care for others. Buy gossip magazines and become a fan or an anti-fan. Have an idol, or target.

7. Smile for everyone. Including traffic policemen who come to copy license plates, tax bureau officials, political opponents in the office, and conspirators trying to steal your girlfriend/boyfriend.

8. When you have no money, rent a small house, live a small life, be with a woman with small breasts or a man with a big belly, and be a small man or a small woman. Before becoming a successful person, using Penguin QQ to make friends and using Chery QQ to get around the city is pragmatism rather than the spirit of Ah Q.

9. Learn to enjoy single life. During the Spring Festival, leave your relatives who ask you if you are married and travel alone, use the microwave to create single recipes, and secretly raise 101 Dalmatians or Garfield cats in the building.

10. Enjoy the ordinary. Wear clothes that feel good, not Chinese ones wearing Prada. Don’t be a slave to the logo, don’t be a vain commoner in the vanity fair.

11. Pay attention to creation. If you want to turn your dreams into reality, forget about the college entrance examination, academic qualifications, salary and worldly perspectives. The Internet, camera phones, and talent shows are all your stage.

12. Learn to use public transportation. Especially when your personal car has to sit in a garage due to parking fees, gas prices and traffic jams.

13. Learn to disappear from the heavy life, go to the pedestrian street alone to swipe your credit card, go to Yunnan, go to Southeast Asia, or daydream about buying an island by yourself.

14. Learn to reuse resources. Watch a beautiful disc for the first time by yourself, the second time with your favorite person, and the third time with good friends.

15. To master the state of happiness.

The low-level state of happiness is to deceive yourself that you are actually happy; the middle-level state of happiness is to claim that someone is happier than you even though you are obviously happy; the high-level state of happiness is to find happiness in unhappiness - living a happy life is not a boring life. , Lohas means being happy and knowing your destiny, and also living out life.