Boring Spring Festival

Spring Festival, a traditional Chinese lunar new year festival, is losing its charm in the noises of commerce and the ignorance of modern youth.
When I was a child, I still remember that I lit a firecracker with my friends with joy and expectation, just like imagining the presents from Santa Claus. Gone, forever, is the joy and expectation with the vanishing smog of fire. Maybe, life is not as wealthy as now, but I share the most beautiful memories with my peers. Nowadays the celebration of the festival is quite another thing.

Exhausted and bored, I finally got on a bus to my hometown, which is nearly a miracle in the travel peak this year. The train tickets dealer always get all the tickets and hope you need. It’s a battle to buy a train ticket in travel peak of spring festival. You have to sacrifice your dignity to use all your relationship to get one. Unfortunately, I still had no chance to get one even if I tried.

This year is year of rat just after the year of pig. In last year we have suffered from all the “rises” in our life. Rise of housing prices, rise of daily necessity prices, rise of pork price, rise of CPI, rise of stock markets(though sharp decline in last week), it seems that the price of everything is rising except for the salary. With the rising prices, I am not in good mood to celebrate the festival.
The diner at new year’s eve has a different flavor since I have grown up and work for my own. I had thought that I could enjoy the festival since I haven’t seen my parents and relatives for such a long time. But unchanged, the life and my family are; even worse, the stories I heard from different friends and relatives. To sum up, I would like to quote a saying, it goes,” life is just common and usual and there is nothing that is worthy telling to others.” I have lost my interests in nice food and novel clothes, even the traditional Duilian is well printed by machine and has similar words. “Happy new year”, “Have a good day”, “wish you to be wealthy”, after all these good words and wishes no matter if they really mean what they says, I finished first day of my festival.

People love festivals because they can eat and converse without work pressure and entertain themselves. They got badly drunken and tried to find others’ private things in the whole year that they may miss because of work or some other things. They say some words they may never say in daily life and they gather together to gamble and argue to welcome the upcoming new year.

The temple fair and other traditions are filled with commercial atmosphere. You can always “buy” your happiness and pleasure to participate the games. All the plastic flowers and all kinds of toys are everywhere in the Ditan Park where the twenty-third Temple Fair is held to celebrate the year of rat. You can enjoy yourself if you have enough money in your purse. Snacks of different flavors are offered for your mouth and colorful shows are ready for you, or games ready to play. You pay ten RMB to play for once and may get one present from the participation. This may be a fresh idea to foreign visitors but a usual routine to me.

Young people have different ways to celebrate their new year. They more enjoy the Valentine’s Day or lovers’ day on Feb. 14 than the traditional festival. Though gov’t finally set new year’s eve as official holiday, young people don’t enjoy the holiday as I was. Life style is changing with the opening to outer world and people have more choices. The youth tend to ignore the traditional festivals since they grow up watching Doraemon and listening to westlife and Li Yuchun.