Big round tables overflowing with sumptuous dishes, firecrackers exploding in the night sky, children anxiously waiting for the red envelopes of “lucky money” and families holding heartfelt reunions.

Yes, it’s that wonderful time of year again when the Chinese celebrate Spring Festival, this year welcoming the Year of the Horse on January 31.

Modern life has naturally changed some aspects of annual Lunar New Year festivities, but there remain plenty of people who love the traditions of old and keep them alive in the Songjiang District.

One of them is Ou Yue, 65, a folk-culture researcher for almost three decades and an ardent defender of old-fashioned Chinese New Year’s celebrations.

“The preparation for the Spring Festival in Songjiang actually starts from the autumn harvest, when the rice is husked and the crops are stocked in the warehouses for the winter,” Ou said. “After farmers have finished a year of hard labor, the New Year preparations provide welcome and happy relief.”

 Worshipping the Kitchen God

On the 23rd day of the 12th lunar month, just before the Chinese New Year, festival preparations kick off with the worship of the Kitchen God.

In old Songjiang, locals cooked dishes on clay stoves fueled by straw and wood. According to centuries-old tradition, each stove contained a carved-out niche to house a statue of the Kitchen God, a domestic deity sent by the Jade Emperor of the heavens to each family to protect them and bless them with ample food supplies.

Poor families who couldn’t afford a statue, hung a paper picture of the god on the stove wall.

“The Kitchen God also had a duty to keep watch over the behavior of people during the year,” Ou said.

According to ancient beliefs, the god returned to heaven on the 23rd day of the last month in the lunar calendar to report on the activities of every household to the Jade Emperor. Based on the report, the emperor either rewarded or punished families.

On the morning of the day before the god returned to heaven, people traditionally placed candies in the mouth of the statue, begging him to speak “sugared words” to the emperor. Fruits and dishes such as cigu, a plant similar to arrowhead, were also prepared for him.

“Cigu in the Songjiang dialect sounds like ‘yes, yes’,” Ou explained. “So when asked by the emperor if the family had behaved well in the past year, people were hoping the Kitchen God would answer ‘yes’.”

After that, the statue or the paper image would be burned, a ritual that sent the god to the heavens. He would be gone for two to three weeks, until the eighth day, or the 15th day of the first lunar month in the New Year.

 Clean-up

After the Kitchen God’s departure came clean-up on the 24th day of the 12th lunar month.

“The Kitchen God didn’t like dusty, messy places, so people would clean their houses while he was away,” Ou said.

In ancient times, brooms of straw and bamboo and mops of old clothing rags were used to tidy the homestead in what was a big annual project. Tables and chairs were washed, windows scrubbed and utensils polished for the coming Spring Festival. After all the clean-up, people took hot baths to be “clean inside and out as a New Year’s resolution,” Ou said.

 Grinding rice

After the big clean-up, people started to grind rice, an important annual ritual in every village.

“In olden times, farmers shared one or two stone mills in the village, so families would get together carrying their rice,” Ou said. “It was quite a busy and lively scene.”

The ground rice would be used to make Songjiang specialties such as niangao, or steamed cakes, which were filled with savories like soybean paste, peanut butter and sweetened lotus seed paste. Niangao in Mandarin implies the wish to “get better every year,” a simple hope of local farmers for the coming New Year.

 Worshipping the Land

On the 27th day of the 12th lunar month, one of the most important events in Songjiang was held — worshipping the land. Indeed, it was more than just land the locals worshipped. They also gave blessings to the gods of the sky, the mountains and other natural surroundings.

“It was one of the biggest activities among us,” Ou said.

He recalled the small shops of his childhood that sold mozhang, or sets of yellow-colored rice paper imprinted with Chinese gods and immortals. “They looked like desk calendars that would stand up when folded,” he said.

A condensed set had 24 sheets, while the complete set had 36. One immortal was printed on each sheet, such as the Jade Emperor, the Kitchen God and the King of Hell, he said.

“Chinese people believed there are three worlds — heaven, the world of man and hell,” Ou said. “All of the gods and immortals were included in mozhang. It was the day of the year when people worshipped all the gods and immortals from the three worlds, showing respect for them.”

On the day, Songjiang locals would merge two dining tables into a large one, placing sheets bearing the gods’ images neatly on top. Sumptuous dishes were prepared, and candles and incense were burned.

 Worshipping ancestors

From the 28th day before New Year’s Eve, people held ceremonies to worship their ancestors.

“It was common practice not only in Songjiang but across the Yangtze River Delta Region,” Ou said. “It was to talk to our ancestors and pray for their blessings.”

Different families had different rituals of ancestor worship, but they all had much in common. Ordinary families would prepare a table of food and wine, and burn paper money, while rich families would hang portraits of four generations of their ancestors on a household wall.

“I remember some of the portraits when I was a boy, but I guess many were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976),” Ou said.

 New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve hosts the most important dinner of the year for a Chinese family. Members get together — often coming from far off — to share their stories and experiences over the past year.

In Songjiang, some dishes are “must-eat” on the occasion: fish, which signifies abundance; steamed bamboo shoots with pork, which symbolize “better and higher;” bean starch vermicelli, for longevity; spinach for sweetness; taku, a cabbage-like vegetable signifying “smooth and healthy” in the Songjiang dialect; and egg dumplings shaped like gold ingots.

“Nowadays many people prefer having the New Year’s Eve dinner in restaurants and hotels, but in some villages it is still the custom to reunite at home,” Ou said.

In olden days, women made new clothes for each family member because everything had to be new on the first day of the Chinese New Year.

“I was extremely happy when I was small because I loved having new clothes,” Ou recalled.

In the run-up to New Year’s Eve, food markets were jam-packed with shoppers stocking up on food for the New Year, such as candies, fruits, meats and oil.

“Preparing for the event sent spirits soaring with great expectations,” Ou said of the holiday mood.

Some families would place holly or cypress branches above doors, symbolizing the wish for a prosperous life.

From the Winter Solstice to the New Year’s Eve, people were required to pay back the money they had borrowed during the year.

“To borrow money or buy things on credit was a very ordinary practice in olden days, but it was also an unwritten rule that you should pay back what you owed before the New Year,” Ou said.

People short of funds often hid in public bathhouse because, in another interesting twist of tradition, it was a commonly held belief that a creditor couldn’t collect debts in the bathhouse, he added.

From the first day to the 15th day of the first lunar month, people were not allowed to borrow or lend money.

 Burning the first joss stick

To burn the first joss stick of the new year in the temple was an important event following the family dinners. From midnight to the following morning, big temples in Songjiang, such as the Xilin Buddhism Temple and Futian Temple, were always crowded with pious prayers. Roads leading to the temples were gridlocked with people, forcing the government sometimes to dispatch police to keep order.

“One year, after I finished the family dinner, I walked by the Xilin Temple at midnight and the bustling scenery startled me,” Ou recalled. “People were lined up in long queues outside the temple, waiting to get in.”

 Greeting the New Year

On the first day of the New Year, people avoided sweeping floors, dumping garbage and flushing toilets — taboos that Songjiang people believed would lock in “the luck of wealth.”

The first breakfast of the New Year was quite special, resplendent with sweet foods such as jujube soup, dumplings stuffed with black sesame paste and glutinous rice balls in sweet rice wine.

“It symbolized the wish for a sweet life and a reunited family,” Ou said.

At noon on that day, families held ceremonies again to worship their ancestors.

On the first day of the New Year, people stayed at home. In the following days, they visited relatives and friends, bearing New Year’s gifts. Wining and dining were activities until the 15th day of the New Year.

 Welcoming back the Kitchen God

On the eighth day, or the 15th day of the first lunar month, people invited the Kitchen God back.

They went to the mozhang shop to buy rice paper embossed with the image of the god and then stuck it on the stove.

Rich families normally asked craftsmen to carve a set of wooden statues of gods and put the Kitchen God in the niche by the stove.

Such shops disappeared in the 1950s, when they were regarded “old dross” by politicians in power.