Guangde – Chinese New Year With My Family

As the countryside of Anhui prepares for the most important festival of the year, red lanterns are strung along the village lanes, firecrackers echo in the distance, and every home is alive with anticipation. For me, it’s not just a return home — it’s a reconnection with my roots, and now, a chance to share it all with my husband Flo. Watching him experience these customs for the first time — helping paste spring couplets on our door, learning to wrap dumplings beside my grandmother, or awkwardly joining in the family toasts — makes everything feel new again, even to me.

The heart of it all is togetherness. Our family gathers around a long wooden table, filled with dishes that each carry meaning: fish for abundance, sweet rice cakes for progress, and my mother’s signature braised pork that brings everyone back home, no matter where we’ve been. Laughter fills the room between stories, kids run between the legs of elders, and Flo does his best to keep up with the Anhui dialect flying around him. At midnight, we step outside to light firecrackers under a sky already bursting with color — a noisy, glowing wish for the year ahead.

Celebrating Chinese New Year here reminds me how lucky I am — to have this heritage, this place, these people, and now, to share it all with someone I love. Flo may come from a different world, but every year he feels a little more at home in mine. And that, to me, is what this celebration is truly about.