A truly global celebration
Spring Festival's UNESCO recognition maps its position as a planetary jamboree that comes from China but now formally belongs to our shared world, Erik Nilsson reports.
Family feast
While it was the most amazing Spring Festival for Moser, that year he missed out on his — and the other participants' — favorite custom: the Chinese New Year's Eve reunion banquet. Everyone involved in the production had to eat basic boxed meals in the studio on the night when people traditionally gorge themselves on the finest food of the year with their families.
Usually, he and his wife visit her hometown for the big meal.
"The food is so great. I gain like five pounds every time," he says, laughing.
"I think one of the reasons I fell in love with this culture is the food. Most other countries do have their local foods — they have their traditional foods — but I don't think anything can match China in terms of the variety and the amazing creativity that goes into food."
The meal is a centerpiece of the reunions that compel the planet's largest annual human migration.
"No other country moves hundreds of millions of people back home to see family (every year)," Moser says.
He points out it's difficult for so many people to travel, and especially to book train tickets, during this period. But people do whatever it takes.
"You've got to go home," he says.
