The Spring Festival, Chinese Lunar New Year, is China's most significant holiday of the year, when families get together to celebrate. In modern times, however, the old ways of spending the New Year no longer meet the needs of young people, who have created various new ways to celebrate the traditional holiday.
    In today's society, people are not as stable as they used to be, changing jobs and moving to another city to work is quite common. Having a big family
reunion dinner is difficult.
    People who have a longer holiday such as Li Qian, a magazine editor,
prefer to go outside the city to celebrate.
   "We are going to walk alongside the Yellow River, chen go to the Shaaxi
countryside to celebrate the New Year,"said Li. "I feel that I can only have a
truly traditional New Year celebration in the countryside. "
     Last year, Li spent the  New Year with his friends in Junxian County ,
central China's Henan Province. Interested in folk craftwork , Li bought two boxes of local products such as a special kind of mud sculpture (混塑) and
New Year paintings, only available during the Spring Festival.
   "Everything in the countryside is very traditional, just like how people
celebrated the New Year in old times, while in the city there isn't much
holiday atmosphere," Li said. "The farmers are very down-to-earth and they
have kept all the traditions. "