'Just an extension of Christmas'

For Mike Bastin and his family, Spring Festival is an extension of Christmas. The 46-year-old from London, who teaches marketing and management at Tsinghua University, has spent six spring festivals in Beijing with his Beijinger wife and her family, and a daughter, who is one-and-a-half.

The couple decided to combine Christmas and Spring Festival, and make it one "big holiday" from end-December to February.

So the Christmas tree they put up in their house will remain till the end of Spring Festival, giving their home a festival feel.

"January is quite cold and dark, but by making it look like it lies between two festivals, Spring Festival feels more enjoyable, more exciting," Bastin says.

"Its celebration is bigger than Christmas. There's so much fireworks, so much noise and color here, we don't have that in the United Kingdom," he says.

"In the UK, the fireworks are organized, but here in China it's like everybody, every family, has fireworks."

Bastin and his wife always spend New Year's Eve with her parents at home, enjoying jiaozi (dumplings), drinking baijiu (Chinese liquor), playing mahjong and watching a bit of the CCTV Gala. He also gives his daughter hongbao, or a red envelope of money, as a gift.

He always looks forward to the time when the whole family makes jiaozi together. His father-in-law prepares the pastry, while he and his wife put in the filling and his mother-in-law boils them. Bastin finds the whole process, that he calls a "production line", very interesting.

After so many years in China he is already like a native, speaking fluent Chinese, playing mahjong, and listening to cross-talks. Every Spring Festival, he buys some traditional Chinese items such as tea or fancy chopsticks as gifts for friends back in England, "to help them understand my life in China".

"I think many aspects of life in China have changed, but Chinese New Year has not, which is good. It's still very much a part of Chinese tradition, which I think is important."

China Daily

(China Daily 02/02/2011 page5)