When people spoke of the New Year, their first impression was often of that busy, lively stretch of days around the holiday. But if it had to be confined to a specific point in time, it could only be New Year's Eve—the thirtieth day of the lunar year.
Besides the customary reunion dinner and Spring Festival Gala, making sacrifices was also an indispensable tradition of the day.
At eight in the morning, Zheng Qing was dragged out of bed by Father. Although the winter sun rose late, it was already fully light outside at this hour.
After getting dressed and pushing open the door, Zheng Qing sniffed and sneezed lightly. A faint, lingering scent of smoke permeated every corner of the house, from the living room to the balcony.
Zheng Qing knew that smell very well.
Ever since he was little, on the first and fifteenth days of each lunar month, as well as during holidays and festivals, several sticks of incense would be burned in the censers beneath the household's statues and ancestral tablets to honor the deities. By custom, one stick was offered before breakfast in the morning, another at noon, and a third before dinner in the evening. The one who used to light the incense was Zheng Qing's grandfather, but now that grandfather was old, father had taken over. As for Zheng Qing, even though he was already an adult, all he could do was kneel and kowtow before the statues; he was not allowed to offer incense freely.
After the incense was offered and breakfast eaten, the men began putting up spring couplets and Fu characters.
As usual, Zheng Qing was responsible for gathering the old spring couplets, Fu characters, pine and cypress branches, and other things they had torn down, stuffing them into a