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Signs of the Lunar New Year  by Mo Rui Qiu
W hen you start receiving massive sticky rice dumplings, and
you see your neighbors tearing down last year’s red doorway
decorations, you’re seeing signs of Lunar New Year.

On New Year’s Eve day, our neighbors were outside cleaning their doors and posting new doorway decorations. On the left and right of the entrance, two vertical strips of red paper wish blessings phrased in the poetic form of complementary concepts. Usually, there is one shorter horizontal banner in the center, above the doorway. The majority Han culture practices this tradition as well, so it is not unique to this minority area.

Pix
The huge leaf-wrapped dumplings are larger than my hand!

Jingxi, Guangxi
White Rice
Can you imagine the smoke and the noise that produced this much firecracker wrapper confetti?

Jingxi, Guangxi

Our first delivery of Jingxi Zhuang rice dumplings appeared five days before New Year’s Day… and the final delivery has probably not even come yet (over a month after New Year). The Jingxi sticky rice dumplings are noteworthy because of their size: some as large as 25cm by 15cm! Some dumplings have pork meat or pork fat in the middle, while others have a sweet red bean paste.

By the end of the first week of the festival, my housemate and I had collected twenty of these massive dumplings. When we had eaten what we could, and our freezer was packed with others, we had to find plan B. We went to our neighbors and said, “We can neither eat nor store any more sticky rice dumplings. We really do not want to waste them.” Finally, we convinced them to take some of the dumplings from us.

The evening meal on New Year’s Eve is a festive occasion when families gather together. I had so many invitations to dinner that I regretted I could only accept one invitation. At the home where I celebrated New Year’s Eve dinner, it surprised me that after eating, the teenagers left their parents and went to hang out with their peers.

Later, I returned to my street to wait for midnight with my neighbors. Soon, the air was filled with smoke and we plugged our ears as the explosives went off in succession. The firecrackers were erupting on the street, unfurling from balconies, and shooting off of rooftops! I had to hop around from place to place in order to stay out of the next line of fire. In the midst of the chaos, I was amazed to see resourceful people riding tricycles around to pick up piles of cardboard discarded from the firecrackers. Loud and continuous firecrackers continued throughout the New Year holiday…but none produced quite the smoke, and carpet of red litter like the celebration on New Year’s Eve!