I was playing with the little one yesterday afternoon when I received a Wechat call from my mom. That was the first time she called me in the past 11 years ever since I left for the U.S. after college graduation. I was initially shocked. However, my mom started the conversation with asking whether the call was free or not, as she heard it used to be tens of Yuan per minute. I laughed and told her that was the price in the nineties. Mom was relieved and started to chat about the coming Lunar New Year celebration. She was a bit sad that neither of her kids went back home this year, as I was trapped by the severe Covid-19 situation in the U.S. while my brother was too busy at work. To be honest, I was not in the right mood of celebrating the Lunar New Year. Having a stay-at-home three-year-old, I have been struggling with work and family responsibilities for the past ten months. I am suffering from sleep deprivation and am working at least half a day regardless of holidays or weekends in order to catch up at work. I don’t even remember on what day the Lunar New Year is this year. However, Mom’s call forced me to pull myself away from daily routines and paused a couple of minutes to recall how I spent Lunar New Years in the past decade.

The last time I spent the Lunar New Year at my parents’ home is 2014. My visa got withheld and my initial plan of a two-week vacation had to be extended to four weeks, which was fortunate enough to include the Lunar New Year. I was sad and worried that my advisor would be mad if I stayed away from the lab for so long. However, there was nothing I could do to make the situation better. So I decided to enjoy it. That extra two weeks were filled with gather-together parties with friends and relatives, as well as yummy food every day.

For a couple of years before 2014, I was in graduate school and the best vacation time was always around Christmas. A two-week vacation was usually split into fours days on the road (two days for a single trip as I was originally from a small place), one or two days in hotels for renewing visa, and less than ten days at home. Lunar New Year is usually around Feburary, which is when work starts to pile up. A few friends gathered together for a good meal at our first Lunar New Year in the U.S.. As time went by, everyone got busier and sometimes forgot about it.

I spent the Lunar New Year in 2015 alone in my apartment. Having been completely exhausted by graduation and job hunting, I only wanted to lay down on the couch and watch some Youtube Videos. In 2016, I, along with a few collegues, spent the Lunar New Year at a visiting professor’s place for hotpot and Chunwan. That was the only Chunwan I watched for years. I don’t remember how I spent the Lunar New Year in 2017. In 2018, Lunar was about three months old and my parents were here. So we went to eat hotpot outside on the New Year’s eve. Luna turned out to be a big fun of eggs at that time. In 2019 and 2020, we were struggling with work and babysitting and really didn’t have any energy to prepare anything except feeding ourselves enough food to survive.

Here comes the 2021 celebration. A big snow is coming and I asked my husband to order some meat and vegetables in advance for a hotpot on the Lunar New Year. We are not sure if these food will be delivered on time. So, we may eat our regular food and call grandparents afterwards to see what they are eating.

I do miss spending the Lunar New Year at my parents’ place. My hometown is changing rapidly in recent years, with the younger generation migrating to nearby cities gradually and not coming back. Most of my cousins started to work at big cities when they were teenagers, mostly in the clothes manufacturing industry and home decoration industry. Over the past decade, they have accumulated enough capital to purchase apartments in the cities, close to either their original homes or to their current workplace. They are trying to get their children educated in the cities as well. They also come home once a year to reunion with their parents. Close relatives in my parents’ generation are getting older and older, whilst don’t want to move to cities with their children. Population in the rural areas are shrinking sharply. Nowadays, the Lunar New Year is the only period of time when all relatives and different generations get together and the rural areas are dynamic. In a decade or so, many villages of such areas will disappear. It will also be quite difficult for dozens of relatives to gather together as people move to different cities. Occasionally, I read articles titled ‘why do you never contact your relatives’ on the internet. This was never an issue in my parents’ generation, as they usually have half a dozen of siblings who all live close by. As the whole community transits from an agricultural society to an industrial society, the next generation usually have one or zero siblings, and can be quite far away from each other geographically. My daughter probably won’t have a chance to embrace the warmth of a big family anymore.

So, with limited time remaining for such big families, I strongly desire to go home to spend the Lunar New Year with parents and relatives, as frequently as possible. Fingers crossed for the next Lunar New Year!