Profiles

Spring Festival through foreign eyes

By Erik Nilsson (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-02-11 07:09

Briton Richard Webster and his new Chinese wife Qi Yinxia will celebrate a very conventional Spring Festival together - but they will do so in Luton, England.

The 51-year-old university instructor and his wife, who live in Beijing, will watch the CCTV variety gala with a Chinese professor in the United Kingdom and make jiaozi (dumplings) using whatever local ingredients they can find. "It's important for Sonya (Qi's English name) and me to keep up with traditions," he said.

The couple cut a day out of their China travel itinerary to observe the festival because of its significance to them.

Webster is also interested to see how the Britons and Chinese living in the country view the holiday.

Their experience of celebrating with family in a foreign city will be the inverse of that of foreign guests to the Linden Center in rural Yunnan province's Xizhou town.

"The adventure during Spring Festival in this area shows Chinese culture at its best," director Adrian Golobic said.

"It's Chinese culture unhinged."

International visitors will travel from temple to temple and village to village, observing various highly localized ethnic minority festival traditions.

"These (foreign) families have decided they want to get away from city life and have a more authentic cultural experience," Golobic said.

Australian Jenelle Whittaker is looking forward to seeing the senior citizens whom she works with at the NGO Community Alliance perform onstage at a temple fair.

The 22-year-old Whittaker said they have been rehearsing for months to give kung fu, fan-dance and Peking Opera shows for crowds.

"It offers a sense of pride for them," she said. "They've worked so hard I think it's brilliant."