Celebration of Festivals – Chinese New Year and Christmas

Posted by Shiny

6th February is the 2008 Chinese New Year.  Last year, the Chinese New Year was at weekend, so we had time to play and had dinner with Mr. Qin, the teacher who works in the Chinese Cultural Centre.  However, this year is quite special.  The Chinese New Year’s Eve is on 6th which doesn’t allow students to play truant.

After class, the Chinese students and Vietnamese students all vanished from college at a “thunder speed”.  After making a couple of phone calls back to China, I decided to go back home to cook my own dinner.  In the past, I usually spent the Chinese New Year with friends and classmates, but I think I gotta try a new style of life.  Some students decided to go to London for karaoke whilst some went for a dinner together.  Like us, other students just didn’t have a plan.  So instead, we spend our time at home.  We could go to CC (the Chinese Centre) to have dinner with some other people, but I just wanted to go back home to have a rest.

Compared with the Chinese New Year, Christmas seems to be much more popular.  This New Year reminded me of the all the Christmases I’ve ever experienced in the UK.  In 2006, we had a fantastic Xmas lunch with our host-family.  It can be seen from the photo that we had vegetables, stuffing, turkey, champagne and dessert for lunch.  We opened crackers and the housemother gave each of us a box of chocolate. 

This year we live with a Chinese landlord who has lived in the UK for over 11 years.  Although his English is just so-so, it is still not worse than his Chinese.  After living in Britain for such a long time, he still has a hobby of listening to some Chinese songs from the ancient bands such as “4 in Love”, which was a hot band in my junior high school period. 

He drove us to his fish and chips shop to have dinner.  It seems that chaffy dish (Huo Guo) is a kind of “hit” dinner for Chinese people in the UK at Christmas.  We prepared for the dinner with the relatives of our landlord and another tenant.  They ate as if they were wolves who have starved for ages and was just released to get some food!  I was so surprised that they could even eat the food 20 seconds after it was dipped into the hot water which was not yet boiled.  We ate tons of food including vegetables, lamb, pork, chicken, seafood and so on.  Finally they all got full, but there were still much food left, and after a discussion, the mission of clearing the pot fell on my shoulder.  It is actually a bit weird to have chaffy dish at Christmas.  It could be argued that it is kind of Christmas dinner with Chinese characteristics in the new century…

As for the Christmas holiday between 2007 and 2008, it was also an incredible one for me.  On the last day of December, we went to Gary’s house to eat chaffy dish as well.  Furthermore, we played dozens of games which I haven’t played for years.  We played cards, “killer”, “truth or dare”, guitar and so on.  Honestly speaking, the “killer” was extremely funny since whether you can play the game well or not depends on how rapidly you can respond and how skillful you can speak.  I was very lucky that when I was chosen to be a doctor in game I saved 2 people, which was the highest record among us and it was hard to achieve.  People kept arguing and analyzing, and also acting.  Some unlucky people always got “killed” although they were indeed innocent while some “murderers” were quite good at defending themselves. 

A Vietnamese friend who can speak both Cantonese and Mandarin pretty fluently without a strange accent revealed some brilliant magic shows to us.  We were kept excited and delighted through the whole night.  Just before 12 o’clock, we sat around a laptop, watching the BBC Live and counting down to the new year.  We saw the fabulous firework on the London Eye and from some boats on the River Thames.  Then we continued our conversation about our daily life.

Living outside our home country may be a bit difficult, but there is no point to be scared since we can always find some bosom friends who really accompany and support you whenever you are in need.  Having these friends, you won’t feel lonely any more.  They share both your happiness and sadness.  Your holidays will definitely be decorated by them and bear in mind that, please allow your happiness to be contagious!