Time stolen memories For as long as I remember, the 12th lunar month sounded an invisible knell of the imminent arrival of the Spring Festival, which told almost every Chinese to begin preparing for the most important of holidays . My mother was as busy as a bee from the 23rd day of the last month of the old lunar year, seven days ahead of the festival. She would make sure everything was in good order, following the pattern of her mother and grandmother. On which day to clean the house, to grind glutinous rice into flour, to fry meat balls in deep oil...she knew. Looking back 20 years ago, what impresses me and has stuck in my memory, was the seemingly tortuous process of making various foods, in many ways the essence of Spring Festival, at which my mother worked gladly and never seemed to tire.
    Another imperative for Chinese people is the need to get home by the Spring Festival eve. Only once all the family members are gathered together, can the family reunion dinner begin. Depending on which part of China, certain foods are a must. For some, these include yuanxiao (sweet glutinous rice dumplings) and jiaozi (savoury dumplings with meat and vegetable) or spring rolls. It was as if the spring rolls, yuanxiao and jiaozi were an invisible siren drawing people home, like a warm, comforting embrace. We are so anxious to return home we wish we had wings and could fly. We are full of expectation to see the door on which the red paint has faded into a patch of mottled inscriptions; to see our parents, their faces older than remembered and to see a new arrival, a chubby-cheeked nephew or niece. The lunar New Year comes in a gallop, whose end is a reunion, and the reunion’s end is the tender affection of a family’s smile.
    But, the last days of the 20th century seem to bring with them a quiet change to the reminiscences I describe. Some new phrases, such as the commodity economy and Internet, have been accelerating the rhythm of life. How time flies! This year’s Spring Festival came around so fast Ñ has 12 months really passed already?  The speed seems so fast that people are left doubting its authenticity. Then I realize, the eager waiting and anticipation of my childhood has vanished without a trace. 
    It has taken us by surprise. This year’s Spring Festival took me to the loess plateau where perhaps, I thought, it may be possible to recapture something of those fast vanishing traditional holiday days. Local villagers, I hear, celebrate the festival in a way unchanged for generations.
    My destination, Ansai County, in the hinterland of the loess plateau in the northern part of Shaanxi province, is one of the birthplaces of the Yellow River culture.
    Waist-drum dancing
    Ansai is famous for local waist-drum dancing to usher in the lunar New Year and pray for peace and good luck. The professional dance also celebrates bountiful harvests, expressing people’s joy at another productive season. Nearly everyone in the county can waist-drum dance, from 70-year-old grandfathers to six-year-old children.
    Waist-drum dancing in Ansai goes back at least 2,000 years.  The drums were invented on the battlefields of northern Shaanxi where the people of the Central Plains fought the nomadic tribes who swept down from the north in the long-distant past. During times of war, the drums were sounded as both warning and encouragement to soldiers, while in peacetime they became a source of entertainment. A local cultural centre in Ansai County has a segment of brick carvings from the Song Dynasty (960-1127), unearthed locally and showing waist-drum dancing in ancient times.
    What impressed me most is the forceful and elegant movements of the dancing figures on the carvings. They verify the long history of waist-drum dancing across the region of northern Shaanxi province, including Ansai.
    During the Spring Festival, the performances by waist-drum dancing troupes usually lasts to the 17th or 18th day of the first lunar month. The dancing ends when villagers complete the ceremony of offering sacrifices to god of the land. Until then, the villagers single-mindedly prepare for the spring ploughing.
    Scores of young men take part drumming as one. Their free and exuberant movements are fully displaying the self-confidence and pride of Chinese farmers.
    As soon as I arrived in Ansai, local friends invited me to follow as a waist-drum troupe went from house to house offering New Year greetings, a custom called yanmenzi (house-to-house performance). A local proverb says no one can resist the excitement of the dance or playing the waist-drum and high-pitched suona (Chinese horn) as the lunar New Year approaches.
    There are more than 200 villagers in Ansai County, nearly each of whom has its own waist-drum dance groups and yangge dancing teams. From the first to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, most villagers dress up to dance yangge and beat drums and gongs as they take their New Year greetings from house to house and village to village. To my surprise, if more than one dance troupe arrives in a village simultaneously they combine into an indistinguishable vibrant throng.
    Yanmenzi means the waist-drum and yangge dancing troupe parades at each household in turn and offers to perform in the courtyard or front of the house. The dance head leads the singing of several lucky songs, while dancing or playing impromptu greetings appropriate to the each household. The owner thinks that such performances full of joy will avert calamity and bring the family blessings and peace in the coming year.
   Sometimes the paths of two waist-drum dance troupes meet to a village during the festival. When this happens the usually the heads of both  sing good luck songs and offer New Year greetings, and then politely get out of each otherÕs way. However, sometimes neither is willing to make concessions and both sides vie with each others. A deafening sound of gongs and drums springs up when they do. The mixed sound of suona and waist-drum soars up into the sky, like rolling spring thunder. Jumping like mad March hares, the dancers beat away on their drums. The whole performance reaches a cacophonic climax and drums and pipes fall abruptly silent. The heads then spar with songs sung antiphonally.
    The team with poorer skills in dance, formation and singing lose, and make way for the winner.
    “Playing the drum does not simply mean using your hands to beat the drum with the little sticks, you have to engage your heart and mind. To play the drum well, requires not only sheer strength, but drive and be daring, use of clever techniques, inject with bursts of force and vigour, in order to bring out a magical beauty,” said Chen Peiliang, a 48-year-old local performer.
    After yanmenzi finishes, the waist-drum teams in neighbouring villages exchange performances to extend New Year greetings. The event is often held on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month when the teams from several villages gather in the local square. This is the final contest for the waist-drum dancers and where the best players, those with professional-level skills, display their talent to the full. In the evening, people from several villages attend another entertainment called zhuandeng (also zhuanjiuqu, a folk dance with lanterns), which attracts almost every villager.
    On that day, I was invited by friends to follow one of the waist-drum teams going from village to village. Many things impressed me, including their formal costumes and make-up, the deafening sounds of drum and gong, and the ruddy faces with their ingenuous smiles. Caught up in festival atmosphere, I could hardly contain my excitement. Trying to capture the moment I shot away with my camera. But the freeze framed images could not contain the moment. The excitement and passion which pervades the event can only be experienced in firsthand and is impossible to convey in pen, paper or picture.