Good Food, Better Company

With the recent hype over “change,” the word seems to have lost its neutrality and acquired a staggeringly positive connotation. I do not hesitate to cheer “Yes we can!” with my equally bright-eyed fellow classmates, but when it comes to certain things, namely the centuries-old “Spring Festival” that nearly one-fifth of Columbians celebrate in one way or another, I am less eager to hold up the rallying cry for “change” that has made many of us hoarse.

By far the most important holiday celebrated in China, Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival, or Chun Jie, has no religious roots. It was traditionally a farmer’s holiday during the time when China was largely an agricultural society. I use the past tense here with some hesitation because even to this day, the country’s largest economic sector by percent of labor force is still that of the rake and plow.

Although Spring Festival celebrations have been changing, one thing remains more or less the same: unlike its counterparts in the western world, specifically Christmas and Hanukkah, Chinese New Year has no tradition of gift exchange. Instead, children usually receive red envelopes containing a wad of cash. Yet even this is not the centerpiece of one of the world’s oldest celebrations.

In tune with its agricultural foundations, the greatest enjoyment of the Spring Festival is none other than what we sometimes take for granted in an age of iPhones and digital cameras: food. No more than two generations ago when most families in China could afford to buy only a small portion of meat and other “luxurious” foods a week, they eagerly anticipated the Spring Festival. At this time of year, families could guiltlessly indulge in “good food and plenty of it.”

But nowadays, when we have the woman from the Coach House Diner commercial tirelessly reminding us of the abundance of their inexpensive and high-quality food, how can Chinese families, once a year, continue to derive such gastronomical enjoyment from what has increasingly become so readily available? Particularly in large cities, we have begun to see Western influences, both good and bad. Materialism, in all its guises, beckons. How should we, as Chinese people, respond?

Although the elusive answer to this question has troubled me for a while, I continue to keep faith in what I think is intrinsically human—our ability to sit back and appreciate the sunlight reflecting off that bread crumb riding on our uncle’s beard. Certain things inevitably change—what was once scarcer is now more abundant, what technology could not produce half a century ago is now the very indispensable item we carry everywhere in our bags. But there is one aspect of Chinese New Year that remains true to this very day and that I predict will remain constant in years to come—and that is good company. It is not the bread crumb that we focus our attention on, but the cozy fact that our uncle eats like a five-year-old when he’s in the middle of an impassioned tirade.

There can be no festivities without those pesky second cousins you try not to think about the other 364 days of the year. A feast at the dawn of a new year is best shared with the whole clan. Just observe John Jay dining hall, and you’ll see how universal this idea is. Coming back from the winter holidays, our central food hub has been bustling with more students than ever. At the start of a new term, John Jay has drawn us back into its welcoming embrace, if not for the food (which does seem to be improving), then certainly for the simple experience of eating at the same table again with friends and classmates. And let’s be real, there’s nothing you can do when that annoying kid down the hall invites himself to your table. Just as it is with your second cousins, you have to put up a smile and acknowledge it could be worse (you could be the only one sitting alone in the back of Hewitt).

This year’s Spring Festival celebrations are coming to a close. Amidst the not-so-long-ago clamoring for “change,” I hope that, however enamored we become of our drive-throughs and 24-hour food marts, the thought of that dinner, a year from now, shared with over 100 vaguely-remembered relatives, will continue to be as appetizing as ever.

The author is a Columbia College first-year. She is an associate editorial page editor.