Today is Chinese New Year’s Eve, and also my first time spending the New Year abroad. In Tokyo, Japan.
Everything around me is very quiet, as quiet as an ordinary winter day. The streets haven’t changed, the shops haven’t changed, and people’s expressions haven’t changed. The calendar reminds me that today is important, yet the air says nothing at all.
In Japan, the calendar was indeed institutionally changed in the past. In 1873, the government officially abolished the old lunisolar calendar and fully adopted the Western Gregorian calendar, allowing the country’s time system to rapidly align with the world. From an institutional perspective, the New Year was redefined as January 1st.
But while institutions can change overnight, life habits do not.
For a long time after the calendar reform, two kinds of New Years actually coexisted in Japanese society—the official New Year on January 1st, and the old Lunar New Year passed down among the people. Especially in farming villages, fishing villages, and local communities, people still celebrated according to the old calendar. This coexistence lasted for decades, and could even be seen in the first half of the 20th century. It was only with urbanization, the spread of education, and generational shifts that the old calendar New Year gradually faded from daily life, slowly retreating into local folklore.
As I watched the Spring Festival Gala, following the nostalgic melodies of its songs, a scene came to my mind:
Some winter around 1920—
Old-style Spring Festival couplets pasted in the house, perhaps already a bit faded;
The young people might have already gotten used to January 1st, but the elders still insisted, “Today is the real New Year”;
At the dinner table, there was both reunion and an indescribable sense of transition.
They might not have known it—but they were experiencing the epilogue of a tradition.
The true disappearance of a culture is never when it is announced to end on a certain day,
But when the last person who remembers that it “must be done this way” leaves the world.
I feel a tinge of sadness. This emotion is captured perfectly by a Japanese word: 「物の哀れ」 (mono no aware). I don’t know if it’s because my mother tongue uses Chinese characters, but looking at this word, I can feel a faint sense of sorrow continuously seeping through the gaps between the words.
It often contains three layers of feeling:
- Impermanence — Everything will pass
- Awareness — I clearly realize it is fading away
- Tenderness — Therefore, I cherish it more, and feel even sadder
The transition from old to new in history is the replacement of culture; the transition from old to new in a family is the passing of loved ones. The sentimentality towards festivals is, fundamentally, a longing for people. Every family has some “final rituals.” Perhaps after a certain elder passes away, no one in the family will ever make that complex New Year dish again, or no one will bring up the stories of their ancestors anymore. This kind of succession is natural, but the people in the midst of it will always feel an irretrievable sense of loss.
It is precisely in this contrast that I suddenly realized what the “New Year” in my heart truly means.
In the cultural perception of Chinese people, the “New Year” is never just a date on the calendar.
It is more like an emotional scale in time, a node where interpersonal relationships are reaffirmed, and a vessel where memories repeatedly dock.
That’s why we always can’t help but sigh: How is it the New Year again? It feels like we just finished celebrating it.
Because for Chinese people, celebrating the New Year is never simply the passage of time, but a profoundly powerful memory bookmark.
Every time we flip to it, the emotions, experiences, and interpersonal connections of the entire past year are instantly marked, filed away, and then restarted.
And at this moment, in this quiet city, I am opening this book filled with bookmarks.