What is the Chinese New Year actually about? Is there some kind of meaning hiding behind the TV Extravaganza, Baijiu drinking and endless Jiaozi making? We have created a hutong Scavenger Hunt to try to find out. A quest looking for the soul of the Chinese New Year.

Today the spring festival almost comes across as a marketing stunt, but encapsulated in childhood memories of our neighbors, small glimpses still exist of a time when things were different. Miss Hua for instance remember how in the 1970s she would only get a set of new clothes this one time a year, to our neighbor Zhang Sunan the celebrations meant you could buy fireworks for a short time in select government stores, to him the new years were all about these small exploding wonders. Beijing Postcards' own Pan Hongchun remembered Chinese New Year because that meat would be put on the table. Most recollections are about scarcity, things that you could only get this one time a year, so maybe it is not so weird that the meaning of the Spring Festival has faded a bit, in a land of plenty.

With an audience of more than a billion people, Chunjie Wanhui is the most watched television show on earth, but the very first installment was not screened in television but in cinemas all over china in 1956. Seated on wooden benches often under open sky, the people of china would have a feeling of sitting at the high table with the most recognized people in China,  At one of the tables at the silver screen sat a tiny bespectacled man called Lao She, this tiny author is often referred to as the voice of old Beijing and a good part of the Scavenger Hunt is based on his essay Beijing New Year.

Chunjie Wanhui is today the extravagant backdrop to many a family dinner. Some people might not be able to return home and maybe some are almost relieved that they don’t have to face the music. Because the Spring Festival is about family, and families demand children, marriages, and good stable jobs. This inspired the Shanghai Rainbow Chamber Singers to make a Spring Festival Survival Kit. In our Scavenger Hunt you might not be fighting for your life, but you will have to be quick when you find your way through the hutong maze of Beijing looking for the soul of Chinese New Year.