In addition to eating New Year’s Eve dinner and staying up late, the folk custom of offering a sacrifice to the Kitchen God, sweeping dust, pasting Spring Festival couplets, pasting the Chinese character “fu” (meaning blessing or happiness), pasting New Year pictures, pasting door cuts, setting off firecrackers, paying a New Year call and giving “lucky” money are also practiced in the Spring Festival.
Offering a sacrifice to the Kitchen God usually occurs on the 23rd (or 24th) day of the twelfth lunar month. According to legend, the Kitchen God is sent by the Jade Emperor to the human world to safeguard and keep an eye on each family. On the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month, the Kitchen God returns to heaven to report to the Jade Emperor on the good or evil deeds of each family. To ensure the Kitchen God gives a good report, people spread his mouth in a picture with “Zaotang” (a kind of malt candy), also known as “Tanggua” or “Kanto tang”, which is made of sticky millet flour or rice flour, yellow and white, sweet and sticky. People believe that if the Kitchen God eats the sweet candy, he will give a good report about the family; and that if he wants to give a bad report about the family, his mouth would be glued shut by the candy. People in some rural areas still maintain the custom, burning joss sticks before the Kitchen God, serving offerings, removing and burning the old picture of the Kitchen God, and mumbling: “ascend to heaven and report good things and then descend to earth and protect the peace and tranquility”, which is known as “sending the Kitchen God on his trip”.
On New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, people will “receive the Kitchen God back” by pasting a new picture on the northern or eastern wall of the kitchen stove. This custom is rarely found in the urban areas now, but people will eat a few pieces of Zaotang, which is crisp and sweet and with a distinctive flavor in the cold weather.
Sweeping dust means doing the cleaning. People clean their curtains, bedclothes and all their utensils, especially those for cooking. Old chopsticks will be thrown away, which means throwing away the unhappy past. Spring, a season for rebirth, is a time for the breeding of a variety of bacteria, so it is proper for people to completely clean the indoors and outdoors of their homes at this time. In addition, the “dust” and “obsolete” are homonyms in Chinese, so dust sweeping also implies removing the old in order to build the new and sweeping away all the bad luck. Dust sweeping must be finished before New Year’s Eve, and it is improper to use knives or scissors or do washing in the first lunar month.
Spring Festival couplets also have a long history, originating from peach wood charms against evil in the ancient times. Spring Festival couplets should have characters in yellow or black on red paper, and should be pasted on the door before New Year’s Eve. The first line is on the right, the second line on the left, the horizontal scroll on the top. You may distinguish the first line and the second line by identifying the level and oblique tones of the last characters in the lines. There are four tones in Mandarin, of which the first and the second are the level tones, the third and the fourth are the oblique tones. The last character of the first line should have an oblique tone, while the last character of the second line should have a level tone. The horizontal scroll reads from left to right under the influence of modern reading habits.
The Chinese character “fu” (meaning blessing or happiness), window and door cuts are for the same purpose as Spring Festival couplets and firecrackers to drive away the monster “Year”.
Nowadays, New Year pictures and door cuts are likely to be found only in rural areas, while the people in urban areas generally just paste the “fu” character.
Paying a New Year call usually falls on the first day of the first lunar month. People get up early, eat Jiaozi dumplings at breakfast, set off firecrackers in front of their house, and wish their parents and relatives a Happy New Year, while the elders give the younger generation lucky money or Yasui money in Chinese. “Ya” means suppress and “Sui” means “Year”, with Yasui money given to suppress the panic caused by the monster “Year”.
After wishing their parents and relatives a Happy New Year, people then go out to pay a New Year call on neighbors. It is the best time to ease tensions if there is any unhappy influence with the neighbors.
Nowadays, making a Happy New Year call or sending a New Year greeting via SMS message on the New Year’s Eve has become popular. At the turn of the old and new years, people are inundated with SMS messages as well as the deafening sound of firecrackers outside, such that they naturally have a touch of melancholy while sighing over the speed of modern life.
On the second or third day, the married daughter will bring gifts together with her husband and children to the parental home, and her parents will prepare a table of nice food to entertain them and, of course, give the children red packets.
The fifth day is also known as “Powu”, meaning some of the taboos during the Spring Festival can be ignored from this day on. For example, women are allowed to do needlework; and the garbage is allowed to be swept outside. That day is also the day to receive the God of Wealth, so setting off firecrackers and eating Jiaozi cannot be excluded.
People usually go to work from the seventh, when they offer greetings to their colleagues. The Spring Festival does not come to an end until the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month is over.
