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The epidemic is reconstructing the Spring Festival of Chinese. "If you have money and no money, go home for the New Year", before the outbreak of the epidemic, the concept of Chinese was that the Spring Festival must be reunited. This year is the third Spring Festival affected by the epidemic, and the way people celebrate the Spring Festival has quietly changed, along with the change in mood and understanding of reunion and family affection.
We found some people who had not returned home for the Chinese New Year in three years and wanted to know what changes the three Spring Festivals that did not return home had shaped.
A person's Chinese New Year's Eve, the third year
Changsha's Chinese New Year's Eve mixed with the sound of firecrackers "crackling". Tang Qiao slept until noon this day, and after getting up to feed the cat, he opened the computer and played the online werewolf killing game with his friends in his hometown in Nanyang, Henan. Near the New Year, Tang Qiao looked at his friends in Changsha around him and went home, still very envious, thinking that when he used to go to school, the New Year was to go back to his hometown to play with his classmates. Hometown Nanyang is not a big place, go home to find old friends do not need to go through WeChat, go out to the night market or basketball court next to the oil field eight small, you can find them.
In October last year, Tang Qiao went alone to play on the basketball court near his residence in Changsha, where a group of students were playing, and he remembered the scene of playing with friends in his hometown before. Now he was waiting alone on the edge of the court, and the students were short of people who might ask Tang Qiao to join, but not necessarily. After working for a few years, Tang Qiao gradually adapted to the life of separation from his hometown, and occasionally felt lonely, missing the days when his parents and friends were around.
Tang Qiao and his friends opened their voices, and from time to time in the earpiece came the lively host of the Spring Festival Gala, he did not watch the Spring Festival Gala, and the British short cat who had been raised for three years was accompanying him. Chinese New Year's Eve, he cooked himself a bowl of instant hot dry noodles, and continued to play werewolf killing with his friends online, until after 6 o'clock the next morning. He ordered a takeaway, and there were even riders left to deliver food during the Spring Festival. A hand-grabbed cake plus soy milk, originally sold for 16 pieces, and the delivery fee during the Spring Festival also jumped to 14 yuan a trip. After ordering for more than an hour, the takeaway rider knocked on Tang Qiao's door, and in the early morning of the first day of the Chinese New Year, they said "Happy New Year" to each other.
Figure | Chinese New Year's Eve people who set off fireworks on the street side of Changsha at night
At present, it is the third Spring Festival after the emergence of the epidemic, and in the projections of the Ministry of Transport before the Spring Festival, this year's Spring Festival is expected to transport 1.18 billion passengers, while before the epidemic, the number of spring transport passengers sent in 2019 was 2.98 billion. If the figures are accurate, that is to say, 1.8 billion people have withdrawn from the Spring Festival tide under the repeated epidemic situation and celebrated the New Year on the spot.
Tang Qiao, a 27-year-old "Xiang Drifter", is one of the 1.8 billion people. His parents were employees of henan oilfield, settled in Henan with his parents when he was a child, and came to Changsha after graduation to work in e-sports clubs.
The Spring Festival did not return home, this is the third time in a row for Tang Qiao. This year's Spring Festival made the choice not to go home, and Tang Qiao no longer needed to struggle with something psychologically.
Not returning home for the first Spring Festival was a hasty decision. On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2020, when the new crown epidemic broke out in Wuhan, Tang Qiaozheng and his friends were traveling in Vietnam, and originally planned to fly directly from Vietnam to their hometown in Henan for the New Year on the second day of the Chinese New Year. Unexpectedly, at the end of January that year, the epidemic in Wuhan attracted the attention of the Chinese people and caused widespread discussion on the Internet. On the day he learned that Wuhan was going to be locked down, Tang Qiao's parents sent a message to their son, asking him not to be busy buying a plane ticket to return to China, to see the follow-up situation, and it was best to wait for the domestic epidemic to dissipate before returning.
Tang Qiao checked the ticket and found that the ticket source was sufficient, and he could still buy the ticket after more than two months, the route seemed to be working normally, and he was not too anxious, and agreed to his parents' suggestion. At that time, he felt that at most in March and April, the epidemic might dissipate when the spring began. "No one expected that the epidemic would continue to this day." Tang Qiao sighed. That year waited until March, the epidemic showed no signs of completely dissipating, and his parents began to urge Tang Qiao to return to China. Tang Qiao checked the tickets and found that all the flights back to China were broken, and waited until May to buy a ticket from Ho Chi Minh City to Shanghai in October of that year. At the end of October, Tang Qiao successfully boarded the plane back to China, when overseas flights back to China were often adjusted and cancelled, and it was lucky to be able to fly back smoothly.
Figure | Tang Qiao's Chinese New Year's Eve meal in Vietnam in 2020
By the second year, on the eve of the Spring Festival in 2021, the epidemic situation at home and abroad continued to break out repeatedly. There is no high-speed train from Changsha to Nanyang, and it can only take more than ten hours to get to the station by train. Tang Qiao really did not want to squeeze into the crowd and increase the risk of infection. Remembering that in March, the esports team could take a long vacation after an important game, he discussed with his parents that he would return home after the game. In October last year, the epidemic situation eased, and Tang Qiao took his parents from Henan to Changsha for a reunion.
In the two years of the epidemic, many people have grasped the essence of the "wrong peak" reunion. This year's Spring Festival, the Tang family thought that they had only reunited in October, so they also decided to let Tang Qiao stop making the Spring Festival bustle and return to Nanyang from Changsha.
In a Chinese world, the epidemic has transformed the paradigm that the Spring Festival must be reunited, and the deconstructed Spring Festival has gradually reshaped Chinese understanding of reunion and family affection.
Chinese New Year's Eve night, when the taxi arrived at two o'clock in the morning to prepare to go home, Yin Yin and her friends had just come out of the Spring Festival Gala and online games. Three young people drifting north gathered a table to Chinese New Year's Eve meal, and when they ate, they also improvised to cut the tiger window flowers.
This year's Chinese New Year's Eve nights in Beijing are much quieter than the previous year, but the most deserted is the Chinese New Year's Eve in 2020 , which is yin Yin's 3 Chinese New Year's Eve nights spent in a foreign beijing.
Last year, during the Spring Festival in Beijing, residents were allowed to light fireworks at a specified time and place. On the night of Chinese New Year's Eve, Yin Yin made herself two dishes in a rental house near Beijing's East Fifth Ring Road, and when she was on a video call with her family, she heard the first sound of firecrackers coming from the community, and then the sound of firecrackers continued to ring, and that night she also saw someone outside the street putting fireworks in the night sky. This year, fireworks and firecrackers were not allowed throughout Beijing, and it was quiet again Chinese New Year's Eve night.
Figure | Yin Yin and friends cut the berm window flowers
In Yin Yin's impression, the most deserted time in Beijing was the Chinese New Year's Eve in 2020. That year, there was no local New Year's Greeting, and more people embarked on the way home and were successfully reunited. And Beijing was also empty because a large number of foreigners who were working hard from outside the country returned home.
That year was the first time in the life of 28-year-old Yin Yin that he did not go home for the Spring Festival. After the Spring Festival holiday in January of that year, the new crown pneumonia epidemic broke out in China. Yin Yin's mother worked in the hospital, learned that Yin Yin purchased a homecoming flight need to be transferred once, the mother was worried that this would increase the chance of Yin Yin being infected with the terrible virus that people did not know at the time on the way, every time a long vacation instructed her daughter to go home for the New Year, the mother asked Yin Yin for the first time: Do you want to refund the ticket?
In the inherent concept of Yin Yin and her family, every long holiday is a festival of family reunion. Since studying in college and leaving home, every year on May Day and Eleventh long holidays, Qingming Festival holidays, Mid-Autumn Festival holidays, Yin Yin naturally went home to get along with her parents. Every year Chinese New Year's Eve, the family not only has to reunite, but also to return to the ancestral house of the uncle's family to worship the ancestors, so that the ancestors who have become gods and immortals can see the changes of their children and grandchildren in the past year.
The pandemic has broken this convention. On the phone, the mother and Yin Yin said: Although my mother would like to see you, she is more afraid that you will have an accident on the road. The father on the side listened for a while, and also made up his mind: he will return the ticket after the meeting, and then go home for reunion when the most dangerous time passes, and in the special period, he must know how to be flexible, and he cannot lose big because of small.
At that time, the Yin Yin family also felt that it was probably the only special Spring Festival in this life that could not be reunited.
The following year, Chinese New Year's Eve, the epidemic reared its head at the coldest moment of the year, and Yin Yin did not go home during the Spring Festival because of similar considerations, but instead took annual leave to go home for a reunion at the beginning of spring. By the Chinese New Year's Eve of the third year, the mother chatted with Yin Yin on the phone half a month in advance about the Arrangements for the New Year, and the issue of "not going home for the New Year this year" has been naturally discussed as an agenda.
"Mom, I have to go home for the New Year no matter what." Yin Yin said to her mother, "As long as conditions permit." ”
In the third year, she consciously had experience - the ticket was sold at the original price during the Spring Festival, the ticket source was sufficient, and the epidemic would be repeated every year before the Spring Festival, and there might be an irresistible epidemic prevention measure that made her unable to go home, so she decided to buy the ticket the day before she was sure to leave, so as to avoid the handling fee caused by the temporary refund of the previous two years.
Unexpectedly, a week before the Spring Festival, Yin Yin had a serious cold, and because of the fever and weakness, she did not board the flight home.
Staying behind for a living
At two o'clock in the afternoon, when he was idle, Yin Xiaowei, a 52-year-old domestic worker, saw scattered snowflakes on the balcony of his employer's house, and after a while, a thin layer of snow accumulated on the ground of the community. The color is gray and white, reminding Yin Xiaowei of his hometown heilongjiang when snow falls, the heavens and the earth are always milky white.
This is Yin Xiaowei's sixteenth year as a domestic worker in Beijing, and she is now caring for a 98-year-old man with Alzheimer's disease at her employer's home on the edge of Beijing's North Fifth Ring Road.
The Spring Festival is approaching, the employer and Yin Xiaowei discussed that the old man can not be separated from the care of people, asking her to stay in Beijing during the Spring Festival to take care of the old man. Yin Xiaowei agreed. Since the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, Yin Xiaowei has not returned home for the Chinese New Year for three consecutive years. At the end of 2020, during that time, she mainly took on some short jobs, the time was more flexible, thinking about earning a few more days before the Spring Festival, and buying tickets to go home for a reunion during the Spring Festival.
Figure | A snowy view of Beijing taken by Yin Xiaowei
Yin Xiaowei's home is in Yi'an County, Qiqihar City. Every time she returned home, she had to take a train to Qiqihar Railway Station and transfer to the 4081 train to Yi'an County. After going to Beijing to work 16 years ago, she only made two trips home during the Spring Festival, once on a green-skinned train with a K-tip and once on a D-head train. "As long as I bought a ticket to go home, I began to panic, until I got on the train, the car began to move, my heart was stable," Yin Xiaowei recalled, "the more north the colder, when I get to Yi'an County, my heart is solid, because my brother will pick me up, I can go home." "In the years when she was not at home, her mother in her hometown was cared for by her sister and brother, and Yin Xiaowei was able to work outside the home with peace of mind.
Unfortunately, the rare opportunity to go home for reunion in 2021 was also disrupted by the epidemic. Around New Year's Day 2021, there were new cases of new crown in Qiqihar City, and the epidemic spread immediately. A few days later, Yin Xiaowei's sister sent her a message saying that the number of confirmed cases had increased a lot, the community where the family lived also began semi-closed management, and people returning from other provinces had to provide nucleic acid certificates for 14 days of home isolation and health monitoring in addition to providing nucleic acid certificates.
Yin Xiaowei did not expect the repeated epidemic situation in her hometown, coupled with the fact that "if you go back, you may not be able to come back", even if the 85-year-old mother said on the other end of the phone that it was good to come back to eat dumplings together in the New Year, she could not make the decision to go back.
To put it bluntly, one is afraid of getting infected by the epidemic, and the other is afraid of completely disrupting the livelihood of the next year.
"One of my compatriots returned to his hometown in Qiqihar during the october holiday last year and never returned." Yin Xiaowei said. "Can't come back" is the biggest worry for her and her domestic workers, the epidemic is always uncertain, it is not sure which link is wrong, returning to Beijing is more troublesome, it is better to stay in Beijing. After all, the job opportunities here are good, as long as you are willing to endure hardships, the money earned is many times higher than in small counties, and Yin Xiaowei wants to save more pension money for himself.
For many Chinese who cannot be reunited with their families, the Spring Festival, which is separated from their relatives, makes them clearly see that they are worried about their families while holding their own livelihood and their families.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, as an engineer sent to Africa by a domestic machinery and equipment company, 37-year-old Du Liangliang has not returned to China to see his wife and children for more than two years, Du Liangliang feels that he cannot be reunited with his family during the Three Spring Festival, and his patience for not being able to see each other has reached its limit.
On Chinese New Year's Eve night this year, when relatives and friends in the East Eighth District celebrated entering the New Year, Du Liangliang in the East 1st District had already finished video calls with his wife and son in China, watched the Spring Festival Gala at the same time, and ate Chinese New Year's Eve dinner with other non-resident friends. This table Chinese New Year's Eve meal has been preparing since a few days ago, and the friend's family has killed a whole sheep and bought some meat, but there are not many vegetables. There are few varieties of local dishes in Africa, potatoes, cabbage, lettuce... I bought some of everything I could buy. But fortunately, the liquor pipe is enough, red wine, white wine, beer in the whole case, enough for more than a dozen people to drink until the middle of the night.
Figure | Dishes prepared by Du Liangliang and friends
In 2018, Du Liangliang landed in Lagos, Nigeria, Africa, and began a life of working abroad. The program of work in Nigeria is one year. As a foreign engineer in Africa, the salary is the only attraction. Du Liangliang feels that they are all blue-collar workers, and they can only earn five or six thousand yuan per month in second- and third-tier cities in China, but their income in Africa can be doubled several times. He was from Chongqing, and his son was more than two years old at that time, considering that his children would live, study, and get married in the future... Some are places where money is used, and there is no future in the domestic construction site, so they discuss with their wives and two people to find a job abroad and earn more money.
Chinese living in Africa rarely buy New Year's greetings and couplets, after all, even in countries with relatively stable public security, there are still security risks. Du Liangliang has a local Chinese friend who is familiar with each other and was kidnapped 3 times in 2019. Due to the low-key atmosphere of the New Year, one year Du Liangliang forgot the time of the Spring Festival, or saw that the company issued a foreign bonus every Spring Festival before reacting, "Oh, it turned out to be the Spring Festival." ”
In the fall of 2019, he was transferred to Cameroon, which has a relatively better security situation among a number of African countries. In Douala, the economic capital where he lives, locals have become accustomed to seeing yellow faces frequently on the streets, and some even know that the most important festival Chinese is the Spring Festival. Originally, expatriate migrant workers would have a 15-25-day holiday every year, and many would return to China to reunite with their families during the Spring Festival, but the outbreak of the new crown epidemic during the Spring Festival in 2020 disrupted everything. Du Liangliang's original air ticket price for returning to China was about 8,000 yuan, and after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the average price of air tickets rose to 50,000 yuan, and before long, most of the flights back from Africa were melted down.
Around the Spring Festival in 2020, Du Liangliang paid attention to the domestic epidemic situation and knew that he could not return to China this time, so he went out to the supermarket on the street to buy some meat to prepare for cooking. He wasn't used to wandering around the crowd, and as he walked quickly to the supermarket door and was about to enter, he heard a uniformed black security guard outside the door say to him in a strange tone: Hello! happy New Year!
Du Liangliang was surprised and amused, and asked him back: Chinese do you still say? The security guard seemed to understand his words, and while waving his hand, he replied with a sentence in native French, And Du Liangliang smiled, guessing that the meaning of that sentence was probably "these two sentences."
Figure | Street view of Douala City
On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2021, he looked at the quarantine time of returning to China was 14+7+7, even if the annual leave was used for 25 days of vacation, 28 days were in isolation, at that time, his company had not yet announced the rules for returning to China, and he did not know whether the quarantine date was counted as a holiday. He hesitated to stay in Cameroon.
Before the Spring Festival this year, the company determined that the date of quarantine in china was not counted in the employee holiday, and Du Liangliang decided to finish the Year, hand over the work in his hand, and apply for a return to China immediately, no matter how much the air ticket cost.
Tough reunion
In the third year, tang Qiao did not go home for the Spring Festival, and Tang Qiao already had some experience. The Tang family has become accustomed to using online chat to dispel their thoughts. The family did not agree on a fixed connection time, when they wanted to make a phone call, their parents would directly dial over, as long as Tang Qiao had no business to rush to do, he would chat with his parents.
Working in e-sports clubs, Tang Qiao's vacation is often adjusted with large and small competitions and intra-team training. For many young people like Tang Qiao, the most important thing in the Current New Year is actually to visit their parents. At the moment when the epidemic frequently disrupts the rhythm of the Spring Festival, as long as the holiday time allows, they can go home to visit their parents, and everyone is gradually getting used to the sense of ceremony of no longer insisting on completing the "Spring Festival reunion".
In Tang Qiao's eyes, Changsha is not deserted during the New Year, and the atmosphere of life and reunion is always steaming along the Water Vapor of the Xiang River. Along the Xiang River, many warm family moments of the Tang family are stored. Tang Qiao lives right by the river, about 30 minutes walk from the club. At the end of October last year, Tang Qiao brought his newly retired mother and father, who was on vacation, to Changsha to live, and Xiangjiang witnessed a short but rare reunion of the family.
Figure | Mom walked on the treadmill of the Tang Qiao Club
During the day, Tang Qiao was busy working, and his parents would walk along the Xiang River when they were free. Walking is a leisurely way that Tang Qiao's parents like. He remembers when he was a child, his parents would walk around a square office building in the community after dinner, and he would accompany his parents when he came home from school, feeling that he was always turning. In the evening, if Tang Qiao's team did not train, his parents would walk from the place where they lived to the club to find him, and the family of three would go to a nearby home-cooked restaurant for dinner, and then walk along the Xiang River together back to their residence after dinner. A family of three walks back and forth along the river, each person has about 10,000 steps.
At eight or nine o'clock on an autumn night, there are some quiet anglers on the river, the buildings on the opposite bank are lit up and projected on the floating water, and occasionally people walking dogs and alpacas pass by them. Tang Qiao likes to accompany his parents to dangle by the river, slow and leisurely, the topic from pets to retirement life, and occasionally hear his mother talk about gossip similar to the oilfield blind date group.
Figure | Lights on the banks of the Xiang River at night
For those who are wandering outside, the hometown is not indescribable. Du Liangliang's area is divided into rainy season and dry season, and when it comes to the rainy season, as long as there is a cloud overhead, it will rain, which is very urgent, and he feels the same as the rain in his hometown of Chongqing. Separated from his family, for Du Liangliang, video calls are also difficult to understand.
Every day, he would make a video call with his wife at 7 p.m. domestic time and around 12 noon Cameroon time to see his son. The Signal of 4G Network in Africa is unstable, and the image of the other party in the mobile phone will appear a little blurry. "I definitely have to make a phone call every day," said Du Liangliang, a five- or six-year-old child who is at the most rapid stage of growth, and he is afraid of not seeing each other for a few days. ”
A past event that made him feel afraid of this kind of forgetting.
At the end of June 2021, when Du Liangliang was on a video call with his wife, his children were playing with toys. Remembering that he didn't hear his son's voice for a few days, Du Liangliang asked his wife to put the mobile phone in front of her son.
"See who this is?" He first heard his wife talking off-screen, and then he teased his son with her words: "Who am I?" Shout 'Daddy' to listen. "Technology has created the opportunity to be able to communicate instantly across oceans.
Unfortunately, the child was particularly reluctant to face the camera, and even his eyes did not look at Du Liangliang, and of course, he did not call out the "father" that Du Liangliang was looking forward to. Du Liangliang didn't know how to face his son's alienation from him, "I ran so far away for his little fart, and as a result, he still didn't recognize me, and the taste was really uncomfortable." "That day he forgot how he fell asleep.
His mobile phone and computer have stored the recording files of when his son had just learned to speak, and after the work, he would point out and listen to them repeatedly: the sound of crying, the sound of laughter, the sound of teeth and teeth - when these voices were stored, Du Liangliang was just a memorial, and did not think that he would one day stay so far away from his family for so long.
Figure | Du Liangliang's son's voice stored in his mobile phone
He and his colleagues hired a local aunt to help with some cleaning. The aunt takes her 9-month-old child to work, Du Liangliang sometimes goes over to hug the child, and will give him some food, looking at the child in front of him, he will think of his son. This year, my son just finished the first grade of primary school, and he wants to return to China to accompany his wife and children, and he is also considering whether to work in Africa later.
As the New Year approached, Yin Xiaowei's employer's home phone was very busy. Past neighbors and former colleagues and subordinates will call the two elderly people of the family every year at this time to say goodbye.
In mid-January, the eldest son of the employer's family wanted to go home to see the old man and made a video call to the old man. Yin Xiaowei remembered that in the evening, the old man's emotions became more and more excited because of this video call, and he kept talking, from the experience of being a soldier when he was young to going to a meeting, and later talking about many of the doorways of the platoon, which lasted more than 4 hours.
On the eve of the Spring Festival, the old man's son and daughter-in-law came to accompany the two old people for the New Year. When Zhang Luo arranged for Chinese New Year's Eve meal, the 92-year-old employer, the old lady, specifically instructed Yin Xiaowei to make the northeast mixed dish. This is Yin Xiaowei's specialty dish, and he usually makes it for the elderly. In the evening Chinese New Year's Eve dinner was served, the employer's family of grandparents sat around four generations, the old man looked at his son, grandson, and grandson all grinned, and his wife told him to say whatever he wanted, very cooperative, no trouble.
Yin Xiaowei's mobile phone vibrated a few times, it was her sister who sent her a small video of Chinese New Year's Eve meal, she waited for the time to come down before she clicked to look at it, more than a dozen dishes were stacked on the round table, the voice of the sister in the video was festive, saying: Look at how our dishes are.
Figure | My sister sent Chinese New Year's Eve food from my hometown
This year, Yin Xiaowei did not go back for the New Year, so he bought sugar-free biscuits and nuts from the Internet for his mother, because usually her sister took care of her mother, and she also prepared the same New Year goods for her sister.
Yin Xiaowei is the first time to take care of the elderly with Alzheimer's disease, and she feels that this disease is a moment of lucidity, a moment of confusion.
One night, the old man asked Yin Xiaowei: Is this winter?
Yin Xiaowei said: Yes, it is winter.
The old man replied: Oh, our family is very small, just one of my children. Sometimes pigs are killed in the New Year, and sometimes pigs are not killed in the New Year.
Often, the memories that are difficult to forget when I was young are often nagged.
*At the request of the interviewees, some of the characters are pseudonyms
- END -
Written by | Song Chunguang
Edit | Wen Lihong
Figure | Respondents provided