Debts and New Year's
The Chinese New Year celebration is far more than a public festival, as it also marks important social, political, and economic relations among people in the community. The following text points to one important function—the settling of debts.
But there is another, more serious reason for excitement in this last week of the year; it is the time when one must settle all debts. Western usages spread quickly in China; our business techniques are accepted by the big firms in Tientsin, Shanghai, and Canton, but the small shopkeeper as well as the ordinary citizen still feels obliged to follow this old custom of settling debts three times a year— just before the three great "festivals of living." It is, if one looks for a noneconomical explanation, another of these rites of "cleaning up," of chasing away the bad spirits. Before we enter a new year, everything should be clean—our hearts, our relations with our neighbors. An obligation of the dying year should not be carried over into the new one, just as the old dust in the rooms should not stay there over the New Year.
It is never more difficult to find cash than in these days, and there is no better opportunity for the foreign visitor than now, when someone may be forced to sell an old family piece to get some. Our "January sales" thus take place the week before New Year's in China, with the same "drastic reductions."
Source: Wolfram Eberhard (1952) Chinese Festivals New York: Henry Schuman, 26–27.
This complete Chinese New Year contains 253 words. This
article contains 594 words (approx. 2 pages at 300
words per page).
