冷场中，不知道该说什么了，呵呵。旁边是美国耶鲁高材生J.R.

    以下是我当时演讲稿的节选，大家凑合着看看：

OK! Ladies and Gentlemen, here we are at this lovely bar. Today I would like to share with you some of my thoughts on Chinese tradition. The Chinese New Year and The Spring Festival are almost upon us, and these have always been two of my favorite topics.

First, let me introduce myself. My name is Lu Gen, my English name is Ben, just call me Ben. OK? It’s really a pleasure to spend this wonderful evening with all of you.

So first, I wanna ask a question: When is the Chinese New Year’s Day? (February the 18th) Do you know why that is? Why it is not January 1st? (?) Because it is based on the lunar calendar, not like the Gregorian calendar we use in our everyday life. The Gregorian calendar is also known as the solar calendar which is set by the movement of the sun. The other is set by the movement of the moon. Many Chinese traditional festivals are defined by the lunar calendar. I still remember I made a mistake of translating the name of the calendar into “lunatic calendar”.

New Year is a time for family reunion. People from all over the world will get together with their families and have a wonderful time. But we Chinese also have some special traditions, though we used to do more in the past.

You know, in ancient times, we Chinese thought there was a certain kind of imaginary fierce beast lived in deep woods. They were called “年”. Literally it means “the year”. This kind of animal is ugly, brutal, and they were infamous for their fearsome appetite-they will eat almost every living thing-from crawling insects to flying birds. Gradually, we’ve learned their living habit. They fed on human flesh every 365 days and usually came out during the night. So at that time, people’s lives were very tough under the threat of this animal. Here forms the expression “过年” means “to spend the year” or “to get through the end of the year”.

How to get rid of this beast once and for all? Ancient Chinese thought up an idea. They lit thousands of firecrackers at the end of year which was the exact time that “年” attacked people. The loud pop scared this evil beast off. Then the tradition of lighting firecrackers and fireworks on New Year’s Eve came into being. Nowadays firecrackers are still very popular especially among Chinese kids. But we don’t do this as a warning anymore, we just do this for fun and to lighten up the mood.

This is the tradition of “过年”. What’s more, in Chinese we have another expression which means the same. We say “过春节”(to have Spring Festival). I think you’ve noticed that “春” is the spring. Because the time when New Year comes is the first day of lunar January, spring draws closer and closer, and everybody will prepare to sow seeds in the field in order to have a big harvest. So that time is cause for celebration. This is the biggest festival of a whole year for every Chinese person-young and old.

That is what we did many years ago. As the years go by, we Chinese formed a number of new conventions. Do you want to know? OK. Now, let me introduce our honorable guest, big hands for Laurie from America.

wear in red clothes

To shield us away from evil spirits and ghosts.

lion dance

The lion is believed to be able to dispel evil and bring good luck. Years ago, Chinese also have other forms of dance, for example bird dance. But only lion dance survived for a long time till today benefit from the prevalence of Buddhism in Tang Dynasty. The Chinese lion dance usually has two factions. One is north faction and the other is south faction. The most difficult one is to dance on 3m high stakes.

dragon dance

Chinese dragon is not like western dragon which represents the evil. In Chinese legend, dragon is the dominator of the ocean and also control the rain fall. So we worship dragon to expect good weather and good harvests. No wonder most of the time Chinese offer sacrifices to the dragon.

paper-cuts

These paper-cuts are put on walls, doors or windows. Generally they are the shape of dragon, phoenix, fish and so on. These animals all symbolize happiness and fortune in Chinese culture.

New Year paintings

The New Year paintings’ contents and signification are usually the same as the paper-cuts. But they are painted on the paper.

We stick a large character “福” on our doors, because this word means happiness and good fortune and other good connotation in Chinese. This tradition has a long history. I think this is a characteristic of Chinese language. In my eyes Chinese character is distinguished for its rich meanings. For this character “福” and another words “颐和园” and “天坛”. Almost mean all the good things in our lives.

Interestingly, not like the character is usually written, we often put it up side down. Because in Chinese we say “倒了” to describe something is up side down and phonetically it also means “something has arrived”. So instead of just saying “good fortune” on our doors we say “the fortune has just arrived on our door step”.

Besides the character “福”, we also stick poetic couplet on our doors in order to shield us away evil spirits and ghosts and say farewell to the old year. The poetic couplet is two successive rhyming lines in poetry.

By now we’ve talked about a lot of things concerning the New Year. Most of them are done only by old Chinese people. But young man and especially modern Beijingese probably don’t do that. Nowadays young people are getting more and more independent and unconventional so that some of them will travel abroad for a change.

At last I would like to propose a toast to the present everyone: I wish you all have a wonderful time in China. Happy Chinese New Year! Bravo!