When I was a child, I spent the Spring Festival in my hometown countryside,
On the first day of the Lunar New Year, the family must eat Tim Shou noodles early, (the best noodles of the year)!
Then the hostess immediately brought out the peanuts, melon seeds, oranges, apples, candies and other pastries contained in the black tea tray, and sat in the hall (those who had the conditions had already built a charcoal stove), ready to welcome the New Year's greetings of the neighbors.
There are families who come together (only fathers, sons, brothers, men, and hostesses who want to sit at home and wait for others to pay New Year's greetings), and there are also people who come alone, with their fists clenched, making waves, and chanting "Gong Xi Gong Xi"!
Then the heroine of the family picked up the melon and fruit plate and grabbed the food for the New Year's visitors one by one. The New Year's greeter grabbed a handful and went to another house.
It's a great custom.
Door-to-door, from the head of the village to the end of the village, every household must arrive.
It enlivens the joy and strengthens the neighborhood relationship of the villagers, even if they were a little estranged in the past, they also pass this New Year's greeting, and they are resentful.
After lunch, some people who have a good relationship will get together, and the women will eat melon seeds, bake braziers, chat, talk and laugh. Men might get together at a table and play poker.
When it's dusk, it's time to go home for dinner, this first year of junior high will not play late, if so, go home for dinner. Prepare to rest early, or pick up New Year's goods, gifts, and prepare to go to a relative's house for the second day of the new year.
If there are old people in this village before the year, then the first person to go to the New Year on the first day of the new year is to pay New Year's greetings to the old man who is gone. The owner of this house will set up the mourning hall candles and futons in the hall of his house before the year.
Worshippers bring their own incense paper to make explosives, light three incense sticks and insert them, and then go to the gate to set off firecrackers, and then enter the hall, kneel on the futon and kowtow to the spiritual position, after kowtowing, and then give the owner of this family New Year's greetings, this master will stand next to you, send you a bag of pastries, as a return prayer.
Rural Spring Festival New Year's greeting customs,
Maybe in a few years, it may be forgotten.
Perhaps, it will continue to continue, because this is the best tradition of the Chinese nation.
