Sending New Year greetings, setting off colorful firecrackers,
visiting relatives and friends with carefully chosen presents,
strolling through temple fairs with the family, or watching CCTV's
annual show on New Year's eve ... all are longstanding ways for
Chinese to celebrate the Lunar New Year Festival, which began on
Wednesday.
This year's festivities have a novel touch: 2008 is the year
that China will host the 29th Olympic Games, which are meant to be a
green, high-tech global event. And not surprisingly, the games
showed up in many aspects of this year's celebrations.
Watching the CCTV show with the family has become one of the
most important rituals for many Chinese. The program often has an
audience rating of more than 90 percent.
This year, a very popular part of the program was a little tale
about a torchbearer, the story of an elderly couple competing to be
Olympic torchbearers. Although they were portrayed as a bit cranky,
the two were also as hospitable and warm-hearted as other Olympic
volunteers.
After the program, the next thing to do was to set off
firecrackers at midnight to say hello to the new year and farewell
to the old one. There were different kinds of firecrackers this
year, since many cracker-makers featured products with
Olympic-related themes.
Beijing Panda Fireworks Ltd., for example, offered a package
that held five kinds of crackers symbolizing both the five Olympic
rings and five "ring roads" that encircle Beijing.
"The series was produced to wish for a lucky, vigorous and
prosperous Beijing Olympics," said Pan Di, the manager of the
company.
Pasting Spring Festival scrolls on both sides of the door is one
of the major rites Chinese people have observed, and the contents
of many scrolls this year were, of course, Olympic-themed.
"Holding the Olympic Games is a 100-year-old dream for all
Chinese ... since the dream will finally come true this year, we're
pasting the scrolls to show our happiness," said a citizen named
Sun Ruisheng. People went out, mostly with the whole family, to
visit relatives and friends on Thursday, the first day of the Lunar
New Year. But with text messages and e-mail now popular in China,
many sent greetings electronically.
Before the Spring Festival, 19 web sites -- including sina.com
and sohu.com -- held a competition to choose the best text
messages. Twenty of the messages got at least 5 million votes.
Olympic-themed messages accounted for 14 of the 20, including
number one.
Visitors must also bring presents, and the Olympic mascot,
"Fuwa", was popular this year in Beijing.
"We sold about 10,000 yuan worth of 'Fuwa' per day since the
middle of January, whereas before that, we got only about 2,000
yuan in daily sales. People bought them mainly as greeting
presents," said one approved Beijing outlet for mascot sales in
Wangfujing Street, one of the bustling commercial districts in the
Chinese capital.
Temple fairs were on the must-do list for many Beijingers. The
city's material cultural heritage office said that there would be
about 20 temple fairs in Beijing, half with Olympic themes.
Also for the seven-day Spring Festival holiday, Olympic
volunteers in the capital set up about 100 kiosks at top
restaurants, hotels and tourist sites for visitors from elsewhere
in China and overseas. About 10,000 volunteers were ready to
provide services like interpretation and map information.
There were also many people who couldn't get home for the
holidays, and 1,500 construction workers at the Olympics "water
cube" were among them.
"By working with my colleagues on the site, I think I have made
my own contribution to the Beijing Olympics, and I feel honored and
proud," said a worker named Qu Shusen.
(Xinhua News Agency February 9, 2008)