Dinner for Spring Festival's Eve changing, memories of past cherished

Li Qian ordered a dinner at a luxurious restaurant for her five family members for China's Spring Festival Eve, which will cost more than 1,500 yuan (about 228 US dollars).

It is the 10th year that they celebrate the Spring Festival Eve outside their home.

But the 61-year-old retired accountant still misses the way they celebrated the holiday decades ago, although they were not so rich and meat was only available during holidays.

"It's convenient to have the Eve's dinner outside. However, Spring Festival hardly aroused my passion during the past 10 years. I cherished the new year memory in my twenties, when food was rationed," said Li, who lives in north China's port city of Tianjin.

Li was born in 1949, the year when People's Republic of China was founded. She was an educated youth of China during the Cultural Revolution, and spent 15 years, from 1965 to 1979, in Jiuquan, Gansu Province, which is now a satellite launch center.

"It took me three days and three nights to get home by train from Jiuquan, and I could only reunite with my family for Spring Festival every other year. The lunch for New Year's Eve was meatball dumplings normally, and dinner was stewed meat," said Li.

Li's father died in 1965 and her mother brought up all seven children by herself. In Li's memory, meat was rationed at that time, a half kilogram for one person per month, but a stewed meat meal needed at least 3kg.

Before the Spring Festival, every family was rationed a small chicken, a very narrow hairtail, several eggs and some rice. At other times of the year, only brown rice was rationed.

"The most cherished memory for Spring Festival's Eve was staying up the whole night and eating snacks. I always could hardly wait to put on my new clothes and shoes," Li said.

According to Li, the New Year's snacks, which included peanuts, dried persimmons, dried black dates, hawthorns, sunflower seeds and fruit drops, were rationed by the government, as well.

For the coming Spring Festival Eve of 2011, Li will have dinner in a restaurant as usual, with her husband, daughter, grandson and son-in-law.

She has spent 10 New Year's Eves this way. In the 1990s, her husband began operating a business and the family's monthly income is more than 30,000 yuan (about 4,560 US dollars) at present.

In China's capital city, Beijing, there are tens of thousands of families like the Li's. According to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Commerce, more than 10,000 dinners for New Year's Eve have been pre-ordered, and the number of customer is expected to reach 130,000.

"The restaurant's cooks are excellent and more skilled than I," said Li Qian, "However, I have to make a reservation more than three months before the Spring Festival, and we can hardly see the menu or order dishes in advance."

Moreover, in most restaurants the dinners for New Year's Eve have to finish before 10 in the evening. The traditional custom of staying up the entire night while having the Eve's dinner has been changing, which makes some people feel strange.

"I have lost the long-awaited expectation for the Spring Festival. However, in the past the most exciting moment was wearing new clothes on the Eve and paying a New Year call to my neighbors when daybreak came," said Li.

Tian Zhaoyuan, a folk-custom expert with East China Normal University said, "The fast rhythm of modern life has changed the Spring Festival into an opportunity to become fully relaxed. And the convenience of eating at restaurant attracts customers' attention."

Some semi-finished set meals for Spring Festival Eve were sold on websites in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Tianjin, and the price ranged from 400 yuan (about 61 US dollars) to 2,000 yuan (about 304 US dollars) per set.

Some restaurants even offer "rented cook services" for those families who still want to eat at home.

And online group-buying is another way to make a reservation for the Eve's dinner during the busy season. More than 30 restaurants advertise A Groupon, however, their menus for the Eve' s dinner are no different than normal.

Although the Eve's meal for Spring Festival is a traditional Chinese custom, some western restaurants have joined the business battle.

It is the second year that Pizza Hut in Shanghai, Hnagzhou and Nanjing offers reservation services for the Eve's meal. The set meal is 149 yuan (about 23 US dollars) for two or 228 yuan (about 35 US dollars) for three, and French wines are 50 percent off, which seems less expensive.

High price is another feature of the Eve's dinner.

Wang Fangping, a resident living in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, said, "Having Eve's dinner at a restaurant cost me more than 3,000 yuan (about 456 US dollars) this year, however, a 1,000 yuan (about 152 US dollars) set meal was the top-grade five year ago."

In 2011, the Eve's dinner offered by a restaurant in Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province, is perhaps the most sumptuous one. The set meal was priced at 388,888 yuan (about 59,111 US dollars), which includes 10 dishes made with top ingredients, famous Suzhou Embroidery, a performance of Suzhou's Pingtan (a combination of storytelling and ballad singing), the presidential suite at the top of the hotel, Hummer car service and a blessing.

Liu Delong, vice-chairman of the Chinese Folklore Association, said, "The over-commercialized folk festival or culture is decreasing the charm of the traditions. Both sumptuous dinners for Spring Festival's Eve and the "fast food" dinner reservations are embodiments of this trend."

According to Liu, traditional folklore, which consists of such Chinese virtues as filial piety and courtesy, is essential and must be continued and protected.

In Li Qian's memory, one thing that has never changed during the past decades is the blessings for the coming New Year.

"In my sixties, I wish for a healthy body, a happy mood and a good family income at the New Year's Eve," said Li.