Spring Festival

There's no beating new years in China. Spring Festival is the single-most anticipated and celebrated holiday week for all 1.3 billion Chinese people: anything put up for anniversary celebrations or holidays the previous year are one-upped; fireworks, from poppers to July 4th-esque big-guns, explode for hours on end at the hands of people of all ages (we've seen parents help 2-year olds shoot off bottle rockets...scary??); one might even surmise that the entire Fall season exists to prepare for Spring Festival.

(Fireworks in the courtyard by the main entrance!)

But I was in Cambodia on February 14 and missed spending Chinese New Year in China this year. As part of an activity in my Speech & Debate class, I asked my students to come up with an argument to convince me of why I should stay in China for the New Year. My non-Chinese teammate used the same activity in her class and received arguments as concise as "fireworks; fireworks; fireworks!," and I looked forward to similar playful dialogue in my class.

Some students emphasized the pragmatic gains of staying in China: save on airfare and rake in the hong-bao (but who in China would give me these envelopes of cash?? =P). Others simply told me that I should stay in China for no other reason than my heritage: even though I'm an American, my roots are Chinese, and I should stay to honor/pay homage to my ancestors.

But what surprised me the most was that the majority of my students told me that I shouldn't stay in China at all; "Spring Festival," they said, "is about family. Even though Spring Festival in China is a great experience, your family is in America, so you should celebrate with your family in America."

Though history and hype have defined the methods of celebration, somehow, underneath the spectacle that embodies Chinese New Year, I saw the untarnished heart of the holiday in the caring faces of 50 freshmen students.

Happy New Year, family and friends--wish you were here.