On the eve of the Spring Festival this year, a video of Fang Hanqi, a 96-year-old famous mainland scholar, greeting Mr. Li Zhan, a 98-year-old in Taipei, went viral on the cloud.
The Spring Festival and Lantern Festival, like the Qingming Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and other festivals, are traditional Chinese festivals and indispensable festival activities integrated into the blood of Chinese people on both sides of the strait.
Every Spring Festival, Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, as well as overseas Chinese all over the world, will not forget the Spring Festival and the New Year.
On the mainland, when the Spring Festival comes, hundreds of millions of people return from their workplaces to their parents to reunite with their elders.
This is not the case in Taiwan.
On February 18, 2014, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, met with Lien Chan, Honorary Chairman of the Chinese Kuomintang, and people from all walks of life in Taiwan at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse.
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Due to historical and practical reasons, many problems in cross-Strait relations are not easy to solve for a while. It doesn't matter. We work together to solve them, but they should not be allowed to affect the development of relations, cooperation and exchanges between compatriots on both sides of the strait. At the same time, compatriots on both sides of the strait are It is a family with a common blood, a common culture, a common connection, and a common vision, which is an important force that drives us to understand each other, work together, and move forward together.”
I had commented on the matter in Taipei's China Times at the time.
I said in the article: General Secretary Xi Jinping used his family and friendship to send a friendly voice to the people of Taiwan. This is a sincere blessing for the Year of the Horse and a sincere blessing to resolve the knot in the heart.
I hope that friends from different political parties, different classes, different religious beliefs, and different regions in Taiwan can hear this friendly blessing!
In the Northern Song Dynasty, Wang Anshi's poem "A year old is removed by the sound of firecrackers, and the spring breeze brings warmth to Tusu. Thousands of households and thousands of households always exchange new peaches for old charms" This poem is catchy in almost every Chinese as a child.
The New Year's customs described in this poem are exactly the same as our current New Year's scene.
On New Year's Eve, we have to have a group dinner, and we must observe the New Year's Eve on New Year's Eve.
These customs are the historical memory and cultural heritage shared by compatriots on both sides of the strait.
The Spring Festival is a common historical and cultural tradition shared by the Chinese on both sides of the Strait. It is also an opportunity for family reunion, an opportunity for relatives and friends to greet each other and greet each other, an opportunity to welcome the Spring Festival entertainment, and an opportunity to recuperate and prepare for spring ploughing.
I still remember that in February 2003, I led a delegation from the Taiwan History Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to visit Taiwan.
At that time, just after the Spring Festival, Taipei was still immersed in the atmosphere of the Chinese New Year.
We attended a party, a spring wine rally called by the Chinese Kuomintang.
At the rally, friends from all parties gathered together to toast and talk about friendship, which still makes me feel warm when I think of it.
It's time to drink spring wine again.
I hope that friends from both sides of the strait can walk around more, greet each other, greet each other, and express their best wishes for the New Year.
(The author is a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and director of the Taiwan History Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
People's Daily
Zhang Haipeng