Why does China need to import festivals from the West?
Print Edition
EDITOR’S note:
Andy Boreham comes from New Zealand’s capital city, Wellington, and has lived in China, off and on, for the past four years. Now he is living in Shanghai earning a master’s degree in Chinese culture and language at Fudan University. He welcomes your feedback on all of the issues he covers — you can reach him at andy.boreham@shanghaidaily.com.
IT was just another normal day, I thought, until my WeChat started filling up with messages wishing me a happy Thanksgiving. “I’m not even North American!” was my first reaction, and then I pictured a huge turkey and all those American films I’d watched as a kid. I’ve never celebrated Thanksgiving in my life, least of all in China. What was going on?
I’m used to getting random messages from friends on WeChat, and even from contacts who I don’t know from a bar of soap.
China has a myriad of festivals and celebrations, and my Chinese friends like to wish everyone well on each and every one — usually with the obligatory digital hongbao (red envelope with lucky money) — however obscure. Festival of Hungry Ghosts, anyone?
And many times each year those messages that come flooding in relate to very Western festivals like Halloween and Christmas.
I can just about understand the fascination with those celebrations since they’re a little fun and quite famous the world over, and we do live in an ever more global society and all that.
But for some reason, the adoption of Thanksgiving by so many younger Chinese friends just didn’t sit well with me. It’s so North American, and so intrinsically tied with North American culture. So I decided to do a little research and find out more about this festival of the big, fat turkey.
It turns out Thanksgiving was first celebrated in America by the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony as a sign of gratitude to god after their first successful harvest way back in 1621. The main aspect of the celebration back then — as well as today — centered around a huge feast, the first of which went on for a mammoth three days. Thanksgiving started to be celebrated nationally from 1789 thanks to then-President George Washington.
This just backed up my strange feeling about China taking on Thanksgiving, and made we wonder why even more. What have the first successful crops of the Plymouth Colony and the founding of the United States of America got to do with modern-day China? Then I asked some Chinese friends who sent me well wishes on the day.
The crux of their responses was that they were taking the festival literally: They wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving as a special time to give thanks to loved ones.
I can’t really argue with that, can I?
But it did get me thinking about China’s traditional festivals that already exist, without the need to borrow from friends around the globe.
One of them is China’s very own Thanksgiving, Dongzhi or the Winter Solstice, which marks one of the 24 points on the Chinese calendar and can fall at any time between December 21 and 23. It’s not so much a festival as such, but it’s the time when farmers — especially in southern China — can throw down their tools and head home to celebrate the harvest with family and a feast of tangyuan (glutinous rice balls served in a sugary broth), or hot dumplings in the northern parts of the country. Sounds a bit similar to the North American Thanksgiving, right?
And then there’s the Qingming Festival (tomb-sweeping day), a day where families across China visit the graves of the ancestors to remember and honor them. At this time offerings are usually made of food, wine, and tea, but it’s not all doom and gloom. The Qingming Festival is also a time for celebration, and families will often head out together to sing, dance, and eat.
There are many, many more examples of traditional and new Chinese festivals that have much more meaning and relevance to the lives on today’s Chinese. Why would anyone need to borrow a festival from half way around the world?
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