No matter whether the monthly salary is 3000 yuan or 30000 yuan, I still want to be with them during the New Year.
Obviously, there are thousands of Chinese New Year plans, but you still choose to be with your family.
East and west, north and south, north and south, east and west. It is the love of relatives, warming the way home. We invited four interviewees to spend the Spring Festival with their relatives to talk about our Spring Festival.
I went home by train for 28 hours.
My tears almost came out when my daughter hugged me.
43-year-old Fang Yongsheng driving school coach
I went home on the 16th. Driving school had a holiday on the 20th, so I went home early. There are fewer people practicing driving at the end of the year, so leaving early will not affect the coach’s schedule. Pay less for a few days, go home once a year, and stay at home for a few more days during the New Year. The most important thing in Chinese is family ties, and Chinese New Year is our biggest festival.
My home is in Qiqihar, and I came back from Beijing by slow train, which took me 28 hours. I got home the next morning just in time for breakfast. My family prepared hot tofu and pig-killing dishes, which I had been craving for a year and finally ate.
That afternoon, when my daughter came home from class, she called out to her father as soon as she entered the door and threw herself into my arms. I was both excited and guilty, and my tears were almost coming out. I am not at home at ordinary times, and I have too little company with my children. My daughter is in the sixth grade this year, and she is more sensible. She will video with me every weekend. Some time ago, every video asked me when I would go home, expecting me to come back quickly.
I was in a hurry when I got home, and I didn’t prepare her a gift for the New Year. But I will buy her new clothes and delicious food in the next two days. Although the taste of these years is weak, there are indispensable gifts for the New Year, especially for children, who don’t like gifts.
I remember when I was 13 years old, my aunt bought me a suit like a military uniform. I liked it very much. I put on new clothes and dreamed of becoming a soldier in the future. When I went to make a snowman and have a snowball fight with my friends, I changed my new clothes for fear of getting dirty. Contrary to expectations, when I signed up as a soldier at the age of 18, I didn’t report it. At that time, the rule was that the only child could not go, which became a regret in my life.
There is only one child in my family now, but there is no such rule now. If she wants to be a soldier in the future, I will support her.
Parents care about their children.
Always more concerned about parents than children.
41-year-old Zhou Wei’s full-time mother
In fact, my New Year in Zhejiang is also a reunion, and our family of three will spend the New Year with my parents-in-law. However, at this time of year, I can always feel the flavor of the year from my hometown of Yunnan, which is a deep concern.
My husband is from Zhejiang, and I am from Yunnan. We worked and lived in Kunming for the first six years after we got married, and we often went back to my hometown on holidays. Later, we moved to Zhejiang. When the children were left unattended after school, I resigned and became a full-time mother. Gradually, the focus of life is on children. The Chinese New Year arrangement is the same.
This year, my child is in the second year of high school, and the final grade has risen slightly. There are 500 students in the grade, and she ranks 73rd. We are happy, but we are also nervous. We hope she can stabilize and continue to make progress. She ranked 25th in English, but 299th in math. Charging during holidays is necessary, and online classes are arranged every day. Therefore, stay and study honestly during the holidays.
The last time I went back to my hometown for the Spring Festival was three years ago. My children were still in junior high school, and we stayed in my hometown for more than ten days. At that time, the flavor of the year was not only the delicious food prepared by family members to evoke childhood memories, but also the enthusiasm of friends and relatives who had not seen each other for many years. That year, it happened to be the 20th anniversary of my graduation from high school, and we held a class reunion.
Every Spring Festival when I don’t go back to my hometown, my dad will send me some hometown specialties, as well as ham, bacon and sausage he pickled himself. I can feel their concern, but I can only sigh that I am too busy.
Parents care about their children, always more than children care about their parents. I will spend more time with my children in my hometown when they take the college entrance examination next year.
When you can’t go home
We will take our sons and daughters to the construction site to celebrate the New Year together.
53-year-old Chen Meiqin railway worker
I was very lucky this year. I went home on my first day in Spring Festival travel rush. In the early morning of the 10th, we took a free high-speed train for migrant workers from Beijing to Chengdu to go home. There is no need to grab tickets, and it is not crowded. We are all very happy along the way.
My husband and I both work on the construction site of the railway bureau. Most of the time, we are at the same construction site. However, this time we were assigned to two construction sites. I followed the construction team to the construction site in Beijing a month ago, and my husband did the finishing work at another construction site. After that, he can come to me.
Over the years, we have followed the project construction and visited many places. Under normal circumstances, I will go home early in the New Year and spend time with the elderly and children at home. My daughter graduated from college this year and started working. My son is still in junior high school. When we are away all the year round, our children naturally become left-behind children. Fortunately, they are all excellent and don’t let us worry.
When we can’t go home, we will take them all to the construction site. In 2011, we worked in Chengdu Metro. Because the construction site must keep people, and it is relatively close to my home, we took my parents and children to the construction site for the New Year. I remember that year’s New Year’s Eve dinner, the leaders gave us red envelopes, and the family members also had red envelopes of 100 yuan each. Leaders welcome family members to visit relatives at the construction site, and we are also at ease. Spend the New Year with my family, no matter where I am, I am very happy.
Of course, we also hope to work near home, but the wages of construction sites near home are not high. We provide for two children to go to school, and the burden is not light. I went out to work at the age of 18, and at that time I could do nothing, which was even harder. Do the work on the railway site now, and it is not so tiring to do it when you are familiar with it. I now earn six or seven thousand yuan a month, with five insurances and one gold. I feel quite good. When our son graduates from college, we can have a rest.
Although I let my parents down
But their love for me is not less.
36-year-old lin li website editor
It’s not the Spring Festival yet, and my family is already busy. My parents came to Beijing from the northeast in advance to accompany me. I am the only child in my family, unmarried and single. We spent the Spring Festival for more than 30 years together.
My parents couldn’t stay idle when they came to Beijing. When I went to work, they went to Jingshan Park to give me a blind date. When I got off work, they were waiting for me at the gate of the community. I know that I don’t have an advantage in the blind date market. On this day, they experienced disappointment again. My parents are 63 years old. They want me to have my own family and children. I want to satisfy all their wishes, but I have no choice in this matter.
Families of the same age, at this time may be the most noisy children. In my family, my mother can only continue to treat me as a child. She is full of fried dough twists, fried dried fruits and jiaozi stuffed with pork and green onions. These are my favorite foods when I was a child. I will hug my mother, rub her face and tell her that it is delicious, just like when I was a child!
These two days, my fourth aunt came to Beijing to see a doctor. She decided not to go back to the northeast for the New Year, so she rented a 120-square-meter house near the hospital and invited her aunt and her family to come to Beijing for the New Year. The New Year’s Bureau of the three families was thus organized.
Unlike before, Chinese New Year is always busy preparing new year’s goods and making grand dinners. Food doesn’t seem to be very important now, but they still like to get together at this time and talk about their children.
The old sisters are always full of energy together. They also bought tickets and will go to Hainan for reunion on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year. My uncle’s family spent the Spring Festival in Hainan, where they bought a house. However, I think it may be necessary to persuade them to refund their tickets in view of the current epidemic situation.
(Fang Yongsheng, Zhou Wei, Chen Meiqin and Li Lin are all pseudonyms. )