Spring Festival: Anchoring modern China to millennial tradition

Editor's note: Francesco Sisci, a special commentator for CGTN, is an Italian sinologist and senior researcher at the Center for European Studies, Renmin University of China. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Much of China's urban population now lives in tall apartment buildings, drive cars, and tap on computer keyboards. The streets of Beijing and Shanghai are just like those of any large metropolises in the world, full of glass and metal skyscrapers, restaurants, neon lights, traffic, and shops. Then, just because of this, the traditional Spring Festival is an essential anchor to ancient Chinese tradition, not just for China but for the world looking and interested in China.

Unlike in the past, the Spring Festival doesn't deny the standard, accepted, and scientifically modern count of time gauged with the solar year, the Earth turning around the sun rather than the moon turning around Earth. Then, a solar year tells us we are not essential, and a lunar year suggests that we still count, that something is revolving around us. It is closer to our lives.

But it adds a layer of complexity and understanding to Chinese society. It is modern in all its external trappings but still holds strong beliefs and sentiments anchoring modern China to its millennial tradition. Its core heart still beats with the 12 Chinese Zodiac signs, with the 64 hexagrams of the Yi Jing, the Classic of Changes. They are something no Chinese doesn't take seriously, if not for actual belief, as a sign of identity, something that makes Chinese beyond the country where they live.

On the surface, it is the old idea of using foreign techniques and Chinese values. Actually, it is something deeper because techniques and values can't live separately and constantly combine in an active mix that changes with time.

The Chinese New Year is a tradition that went out of fashion in many countries that had previously adopted it, like Japan and South Korea, but it remains strong in China. It is a sign of identity after a hundred years of fast Westernization/modernization after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912.

It is important because people understand it. They may enjoy the games on their smartphones, the high-speed trains, and the new riches of the cities, but the Chinese New Year is a time of family reunions, of being happy together, of bragging and drinking, talking loud like the old times, like the grandparents, like the ancestors, dreaming that the year will be better than last one, that you will make money and be happy with your wife or husband, with your child, or with a grandchild. It hooks the future, uncertain, full of risks, to the past, full of memories, which is known and dear to us.

The year 2024 will be a super Chinese New Year, the Year of the Dragon. Of the 12 traditional Zodiac signs, only the Chinese Dragon, or Loong, is mythological and unique to China. It represents the Yellow River, the cradle of the Chinese civilization, and the imperial power, symbolizing China like nothing else. The Chinese New Year, beginning on February 10, 2024, and ending on January 28, 2025, should bring opportunities, change, and challenges, like every year, but in 2024, it is especially true.

It is not necessary to believe in these forecasts. They are words of caution, and advice from stars that told people what to do with agriculture and human affairs. Now that technology has replaced almost everything, the forecasts drawn from old books remind us that the past can't be forgotten or neglected; otherwise it will get back to us with a vengeance.

The Chinese New Year now is no longer a celebration of a culture, a world isolated from the rest of the world. China is part of a vast world, and Chinese culture is part of it. The Spring Festival then becomes a gesture China offers to the world and a contribution of Chinese culture to global culture. Non-Chinese, like myself, can feel in their guts, on their skin what China is by celebrating it once a year, feel naturally close to a different culture and thus become a little different ourselves.

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