Chapter 156 Ringing Out the Old and Ringing In the New

Dong Yanyan brushed paste onto the largest couplet, lifted it up on tiptoe, and carried it out to the front gate. Measuring it against the doorpost, she found she still couldn't reach it. She hopped a few times, but it was still out of reach. If she didn't get it pasted soon, the paste would freeze dry. Just as she was about to go back inside to call her dad, she happened to see the neighbor's eldest son strolling past the front of the house.

She quickly called out to him, "Brother, help me put up the Spring Festival couplets, I can't reach!"

"You really are clumsy!" The neighbor's son took the couplets from her hand, helped her paste them onto the door frame, took two steps back, clapped his hands with satisfaction, and asked her, "Where is the horizontal scroll? I'll put it up for you too!"

"I haven't brought it out yet! Wait a second!" Dong Yanyan ran back inside, brushed paste onto the other couplet, and seeing there was a horizontal scroll on top, she brushed paste on that as well and took them all out together.

Once the couplets and the character for fortune were all up, the festive atmosphere of the New Year instantly came alive! Hanging two large red lanterns at the front gate made it as festive as could possibly be!

Dong Yanyan ran back into the house only to find her dad and Nannan sneaking food in the kitchen! The aroma of the newly boiled pork was mouth-watering. Seeing her enter, her dad cut off a large piece of fragrant lean meat with a small knife and stuffed it into her mouth.

"So good!" She curved her eyes into smiles and said, "I haven't had meat this delicious in a long time."

Her mother walked in carrying a basin of meat aspic that had been freezing outside the window all night. Seeing the three of them clustered around the stove eating meat, she smiled and said, "If you're hungry, set the table and eat. Tonight's dinner won't be until midnight."

"Mm-hm, okay!" Dong Yanyan replied as she ate.

Her dad fetched a kitchen knife, sliced a quarter of the aspic from the basin onto the cutting board, and with a steady tremor in his hand, quickly sliced up a plate of thin, crystal-clear, wavy-patterned aspic.

He placed a plate of garlic soy sauce next to it, and the mere sight of it was enough to make one's mouth water.

"Cut that basin of ddeok that Auntie Jin brought too! I love ddeok the most!" Dong Yanyan smiled. For the ethnic Korean people, the Spring Festival was not a major holiday, but they always made ddeok in the winter. The ddeok they made was chewy and springy, with a pure flavor. Unfortunately, her mother wouldn't let her eat too much; eating too much glutinous rice caused acid reflux.

She thought for a moment, and an idea came to her. "How about I make you some stir-fried rice cakes? We have spicy sauce at home anyway!"

Her mother looked skeptical. "Can rice cakes be stir-fried? Does stir-fried rice cake taste good?"

"Don't worry, it's definitely good! I've had it!" Dong Yanyan patted her chest in assurance.

History proved that having eaten something did not mean one could cook it well. After Dong Yanyan finished stir-frying her plate of rice cakes, the rice cakes were still rice cakes, and the spicy sauce was still spicy sauce. When served at the table, everyone took one bite and no one reached out with their chopsticks again.

"Save this one, it brings good luck." Her dad even offered a hypocritical compliment.

Dong Yanyan smiled without a word, gazing into the distance~~~~~

At eight o'clock in the evening, the annual Spring Festival Gala officially began, and the family sat cozily around the television to watch the lively show. Uncle Zhao hadn't retired yet, Aunt Ni Ping still retained her charm, and Zhu Jun was still fresh-faced—who would have thought that fifteen years later he would age worse than Uncle Zhao. That year's Spring Festival Gala genuinely launched two divas to fame: Na Ying and Faye Wong. If they had merely been ordinary stars before, ever since their song "Meeting 1998" debuted on the gala stage, they instantly became Superstars, virtually sweeping the mainland music scene with almost no peers to match them. And Na Ying would indeed produce quite a few great songs in the years to follow.

"Meeting under the silvery moonlight, meeting in the warm years of youth, meeting year after year, no matter how near or far..."

A year had passed just like that. Recalling her fantastical experiences over the past year, Dong Yanyan could not help feeling deeply emotional. She remembered that around this time last year, it was her and Xu Cheng with the child, a family of three eating dumplings; yet after just this short while, she was spending it as a family of four, and her role had once again been demoted from mother to daughter.

Really, from this perspective, being a mother was happier than being a daughter, because a daughter had to mind her mother's moods, whereas a mother could do whatever she pleased and think whatever she wished.

"Yanyan, Nannan, let's go set off firecrackers together!" Her dad's words pulled her back from her memories.

She put on her thick down jacket and wrapped a thick scarf around Nannan as well. The two sisters watched from the steps as their dad set off firecrackers in the courtyard. Although it was not yet ten o'clock, sporadic sounds of firecrackers could already be heard in the distance. Everyone hoped their family would be the first to set them off—known as snatching wealth—so the time for the New Year's Eve dinner kept getting earlier and earlier. After a burst of deafening firecrackers, a thick layer of firecracker debris littered the ground. Firecracker sounds rang out from every household, and looking up, the night sky was already filled with fireworks.

She remembered always having a recurring dream in which the stars in the sky formed countless little animals and geometric patterns, so large and so close, like glowing kites. Thinking back now, weren't those just fireworks? As brilliant as could possibly be.

Nannan clapped her little hands excitedly on the side, begging her dad to set off fireworks for her. Looking at Nannan's adorable little expression, Dong Yanyan thought of Lulu. Lulu also loved to pester her father to set off fireworks, and Xu Cheng, just like her dad, would do whatever it took to make his daughter happy no matter how chaotic it got. Consequently, every time the Spring Festival passed, the windows and windowsills were bombed into a disastrous state, and it would take her a long time to clean up.

I wonder what Jiaxuan would be like as a father? He could wrap his own mother around his little finger, so handling a daughter should be a breeze for him.

Thinking of Jiaxuan, she finally realized what was missing this Spring Festival: no phone rings, no text messages, so quiet it was almost surreal. Rural areas during the Spring Festival were still in a state where transportation relied basically on walking and communication relied basically on shouting. Tomorrow was the first day of the Lunar Year, and the village children would once again go from house to house to pay their New Year's greetings, lively enough to last a whole day. Of course, she and Nannan would go too. Back then, every time she returned from paying New Year's calls, her pockets would be stuffed full of candies. The taste of those candies still seemed so sweet when she thought of them now.

After finishing the New Year's Eve dinner and watching the Spring Festival Gala, her dad and mom went to bed early. Dong Yanyan decided to stay up with Nannan to welcome the New Year for them. The two of them played cards until two o'clock in the second half of the night when neither could hold on any longer, and they slumped beside their parents and fell fast asleep.

When she woke up the next morning, a thick cotton quilt had already been draped over her body, and her mother was folding quilts and tidying up the room nearby.

"You two get up quickly! People will be coming over to pay New Year's greetings in a minute!" Her mother urged.

Dong Yanyan got up yawning to get dressed. The countryside was different from the city; during the New Year in the countryside, all the adults and children in the village went from house to house to pay respects, especially to households with elderly people—visits that absolutely everyone had to make to show respect for the elders. Besides her grandparents', uncles', and older uncles' homes, there were at least a hundred other households to visit, so they had to get up early.