David Feng
It once used to be a festival that was anything but digitised. These days, gauging from where all the action is, one has to admit — the opposite must be true…
However, no matter in which for it takes place — online or offline, digitised or analogue — Chinese New Year, otherwise known as the Spring Festival or the Lunar New Year, is an event of importance that, in terms of headcount, would give Thanksgiving in the US, or Christmas for much of the Western world, fierce competition. In London, it’s felt around that bit of W1 around Gerrard Street; it also is felt in your local supermarket (much as Diwali was felt around Harrow), when red dragons, lanterns, and, to the uninitiated, “funny-looking characters” start popping up.
In China and much of the Sinosphere, this is the one event of the year which is “the big event”. Buses in Taipei, instead of telling you which route it was, re-don their digital screens to Congratulate Prosperous Fortunes (恭喜發財), in the festive spirit. The “in” animal (for 2015, sheep for the Year of the Sheep — or Ram — or Goat) is given extensive publicity, national flags are shown all over China, and roundabouts show art featuring massive characters in red and yellow, wishing everyone a Happy Lunar New Year.
It’s also that time of the year when trains are packed with people, airports are notably busier than usual, and when the national highway and expressway system see a much more visible police presence — to keep travellers safe, to penalise those carrying more people on coaches than legaly permitted, and to help motorists in case something wrong happens to their cars on their way home. After all, it is what it’s all about — heading home with the extended family for that crucial dinner on the last day of the lunar new year.
Most of in particular North China prepares Chinese dumplings, and the one thing that most in the country care about happens at 20:00, when Central Television shows the Chinese New Year Gala. 50 year olds watch it in the main 50-inch TV in the living room; kids born in the 1990s watch it on their 9-inch phablets. These typically are what you’ll find happening in the average Chinese household hours before the new year in the Chinese lunar calendar is with them. Outside the home, firecracker vendors are ready for what happens at the stroke of midnight, motorway signs that warn drivers of road hazards show their more “festive / cheery” sides, and yellow-on-red banners feature not political propaganda, but more in the way of Acme Corporation (or whatever your local company is called) “wishing the entire population a Happy Spring Festival” (给全国人民拜年).
Chinese New Year is an old festival — it’s been with us for many centuries, millennia even — and the predominant message is one of joy. This message, however, has also been increasingly digitised in the 21st century. Here’s a look at the message through the ages.
1983: The First Chinese New Year Gala on TV
For those well in the know, the first Chinese New Year Gala on Chinese Central Television became reality in 1983 on the television screens. For those still deeper in the know, however, the first such gala, of sorts,was in fact, a 1956 invention. (This was two years before Mao’s first large-scale political “event”, the Great Leap Forward.)
Never mind this wasn’t a live event: the 1956 gala had some of the most known names in arts involved, including Mei Lanfang, a master of Peking Opera, and prominent “liter-art workers” (as known officially) including Lao She and Ba Jin.
The political turmoil in the two movements Mao launched, however, would mean there was very little time for celebrating the Chinese New Year until 1979, just after Deng’s reforms started being implemented in a late 1978 meeting of the Communist Party. From 1979 to 1982, however, these shows would still be pre-recorded rather than being live. In 1983, the first live gala went on air.
Thus, the “first”, or rather “first real” Chinese New Year Gala on Central Television, is often known to have started in 1983, although as mentioned before, the idea was not new. Since that year, it has been safe to say that millions, close to billions, were gathered in front of TV screens on Chu Xi, the last day of the old year in the Chinese lunar calendar. These would often be 4-5 hours in length (in more recent years they have tended to be at least 5 hours in length, often going into a sixth hour).
The form of the gala has always been somewhat politicised. (And yes, Peng Liyuan, wife of current Chinese President Xi Jinping, was live on the programme!) There would almost always be performers from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, as well as from overseas, representing the Chinese diaspora. The political factor was more felt in the 1990s, including when Chinese President Jiang Zemin went onstage to greet everyone in the 1990 edition, and when political slogans — including one often heard in China, Let us rally around the party centre with General Secretary ____ at its core, were often said in the dying moment of the last year. (The obnoxious amount of product placement, long practised until 2012, also didn’t win favours with the audience.)
The fact that, for a long time, these galas remained “much the same”, led to a “counter-culture” of sorts where audiences would mock skits, or hurl even outright abuse at the gala. (As long as these weren’t overtly political, they could be assumed “safe territory”.) When Xi Jinping came in, out went excessively “boring”, politicised content, and in came a 4-minute documentary at the start, which showed Chinese heading home — very much “come hell or high water”, since the dinner on the last day of the old year was one that simply could not be missed.
Early to mid 2000s: SMS Text Message Greetings
Back in 1999, the humble SMS text message in China was something that could be sent from international mobiles roaming in Chinese territory — but could not be sent from a domestic device. The early 2000s didn’t do too much for the text message either; sending one still would cost subscribers upwards of around ¥ 0.10 (1p), and in an era where text message bundles or pre-paid packs weren’t available, an angry 200-message long (!) tirade would easily materialise into a ¥ 20 bill. Never mind this was merely a two-pound coin here in the UK; “high-end” mobile consumers in China would those who spent anything more than a hundred yuan Renminibi on the mobile networks.
But mobile messaging was faster, more flexible than a pre-printed greeting card (although it lacked the amusing / annoying pop-up characters in many a card), and it worked out to be more popular. Hence people would easily spend around ¥ 20 or so every Chinese New Year to send (to some: read as “spam”) family, friends and colleagues New Year text messages.
They turned out to be quite interesting to collect — if only some were sent to the wrong people (since most were boilerplate and originality was quite low). They also ended up invariably annoying, however. A 2009 joke welcoming in the Year of the Ox swapped the Chinese character for “cow” (which read “niu” in Chinese) with the English word, “new”. As a result, the message Happy Niu Year was funny and amusing — for about 2 minutes. When this became the trendiest message that year, and where every second message wished people a Happy Niu Year — it became a bore — and ended up as the one message you wish you didn’t receive.
(Probably because everyone else got it.)
To the average recipient, there was also a lack of sincerity on the side of the sender when merely the name of the sender was revealed. When all were wished fortune, profit (yes! We do actually worship the “Money God” in Communist-run China!), and sundry, instead of sincere attempts to relate to the actual recipient, it got frustrating — and one would wish they were rather not sent the message.
It escalated eventually into the 2014 skit (aired live on the 2014 edition of the Chinese New Year Gala) — I’m Not Replying to Messages You’ve Sent En Masse (群发的短信我不回).
Whereupon the messages simply would convert to another format (or formats) still…
Early 2010s: Weibo and WeChat Greetings
To some, following Weibo accounts and getting a nice, pre-recorded video message from your local train team, wishing you a Happy Chinese New Year in your local dialect, makes the new year all the more worthwhile. (Nationally, Central Television wishes you a Happy Chinese New Year in Mandarin Chinese only, so if you’re based in Fuzhou, you might want to hear it in the local accent!)
To others, the Direct Messages part is what one would be after. No longer relegated to 160 ASCII characters, or 70 Chinese characters, users can now write longer messages and even attach pictures. The other way would be to compose a “festive-looking” message on Weibo, then when retweeting it, @mention all friends. (Sina Weibo does tend to warn users who @mention 5 or more users, however.)
In more recent years, WeChat seems to have stolen Weibo’s thunder, and so more messages are now being sent on that service. An amusing (or equally annoying!) feature of WeChat is to do “special visual effects” based on the content your messages, so anything mentioning “Christmas” around 25 December is accompanied by a flurry of falling Christmas trees, whereas over Chinese New Year, it must be something — well, very festive the Chinese way!
An increase in OS and software support for emoji has also meant that users are now getting more and more messages with emoji in them. WeChat also has a feature — to some, highly amusing; to others, highly irritating — of cartoon GIFs that move. Some are cute; some are the kind you wish you never saw. The canned messaging of moving GIFs, emoji, and animated Chinese elements of the festival still does little to “personalise” the message. However, on WeChat, this is easily solved by being personal “the easy way”: most users of the service make use of its “walkie-talkie” function. This is an obvious hint, then, to personalise the message using one’s own voice — which is much more unique than the at-times resented “canned text messages” of years gone by.
2015: Red Envelopes of Luck via WeChat
The one development in 2015 that seems to make Chinese New Year’s messages that more interesting to observe in the digital arena has been the Red Envelopes of Luck function added to both Weibo, and more notably, to WeChat.
It works by having the service connect to your bank account (based in China), then to allow you to transfer money over — to give friends cash to spend over the holiday. (When one comes to think of this, it actually makes more sense than — for example, giving a friend the wrong gift, such as a T-shirt in one’s least favourite colour!)
The pros and cons are equally obvious. The pros are “instant gratification”. The cons, visible as well, are the temptation to show this on your WeChat Moments (or Weibo posts), thus very likely sparking a “which-friend-gave-me-more-money” contest, which in the end defeats the purpose (perhaps!) of merely “being nice”. The temptation of treating your friends better based on how much they give you is taken to a new level if one is still single, according to a popular WeChat post on the matter…
Give me ¥ 9: I’ll show your pic as my avatar for a day
Give me ¥ 19: I’ll tell all my friends in WeChat Moments that I like you
Give me ¥ 39: I’ll give you a morning call for a week
Give me ¥ 50: I’ll do you a favour
Give me ¥ 520*: I’ll love you for a day
Give me ¥ 1314*: I’ll love you for three days
Give me ¥1314520*: I’ll meet you at the Marriage Registration Office
Never mind the original Chinese post uses as “cutesy” font; it is cute for maybe a few moments, then reality sets in — money can’t buy you love…
* The numbers 520, 1314 and 1314520 all mean something special in Chinese (when read out loud):
520 = I love you
1314 = Forever
Hence: 5201314 = I love you forever
What’s Next: An Increasingly Isolated / “E-Connected” Chinese New Year?
One must wonder, then, if Marshall McLuhan was being optimistic, upbeat, or, as is the case for many an academic, critical, when the ideal of the “global village” was first being floated. We are increasingly in a connected disconnected global village. Never mind we have thousands of friends and followers on social media; short of doing a videoconference, it’s hard to feel their “co-presence”
Sending people money is addictive; wanting people to give you money is even more addictive. Thinking that a one-off text en masse to 200 friends “will be what’s needed for Spring Festival” is merely an act of formalism. The current situation shows no signs it will be “business as usual” back in “the old days” — but there is consolation of some sort.
Traditionally, on the second day of the New Year, people would visit close friends, and on either the fourth or eighth day, “spring dinners” in companies would often happen. This means there is still a “human element” to the festival, after all.
Do everyone a favour, then, please — leave your iPhones back at home when visiting friends. (Oh, right, but what about the selfie with my friend?…)
Tags: Chinese New Year, digitised message, Lunar New Year, Spring Festival