I left my home long ago, and my impressions of Chinese New Year have become increasingly vague. But at the bottom of my heart, the sentiments toward that atmosphere of intimacy when the whole family gathered together have only grown with time.

When I first came to America, I would always cry a lot whenever the Lunar New Year came around. My thoughts of my loved ones were soaked in a river of tears. After a number of years I adjusted and came to celebrate "American New Year" according to the local customs. At least, the loneliness decreased to some degree.

Before my eldest child had reached school age, I began to teach him how to say a few auspicious blessings around the New Year. Though I was separated from home by the Pacific Ocean, when I listened to him say in his little child's voice, "Good Fortune" or "Happy New Year," clasping his hands together in blessing, as if only half understanding, it was as if I was no longer standing on foreign soil. Even though I was unable to celebrate the coming of the new spring with my kith and kin, our branch of the family did our very best, by dining on hot pot, wearing new clothes, letting my child don a little traditional suit of skullcap and cotton jacket. He was curious, and we felt joyful inside watching him.

Here, the Lunar New Year is a special celebration for Chinese people, not a public holiday with time off from work. I remember that when my eldest son was attending preschool, his teacher asked me if I could go before the class and introduce the Chinese New Year. That year on New Year's Eve, I was busy preparing class materials and food, and I was busy rolling up dumplings. My child was by my side looking at a picture book about the Chinese New Year. He was very curious about the boisterous images in the book. On the morning of Chinese New Year, I got up early to fry the dumplings, to get ready to take them to school. After I changed into my costume, he rubbed my clothes in front and in back. He thought the Chinese-style clothes his mother was wearing were the most marvelous sight he had ever seen. He especially loved the bright red color, and he asked if he could dress up all in red too and go to school together with his mom.

The three- and four-year-old kids were very curious and perceptive toward the stories I told about "driving out the Year Beast" and the Chinese zodiac with the 12 animal signs. Every one of those little faces was beaming with surprise and delight. And when they had finished eating the dumplings, and I had handed out red envelopes, each containing a quarter, they were beside themselves with happiness over the "unexpected profits."

Probably because my boy has such strong memories of that event, every year he implores us to give him a red envelope, as the anticipation for the New Year builds. Last year we managed to get time to go back to Taiwan for the New Year. My child was intrigued by the sea of people filling the streets shopping for the New Year, and the noisy, crackling firecrackers. When he returned to school after his New Year's sojourn, he often told his teacher and classmates about the many spectacles of Taiwan's New Year. It made me feel deeply that I was right to instill in him at a young age the attitude that "a Chinese person should understand Chinese things (and writing)."

We've lived abroad for a long time, and our celebration of the Lunar New Year isn't nearly as raucous and exciting as the ones back home. But if we try hard, we can still hunt out its traces in our daily lives; by watching videos or looking at picture books and so on, we can make sure our family and our children understand the meaning of the New Year. Because of the training, both tangible and intangible, that they've received over these several years, as soon as the New Year season is upon us, the children begin to anticipate the joyful atmosphere of wearing new clothes, putting on new hats, visiting friends, eating hot pot dinners and dumplings, and worshipping our ancestors.

The Song era intellectual Wang An-shih wrote a poem that goes: "Firecrackers announce the end of the year/ The winds of spring warm the wine/ Every household awaits the day/ To replace old scrolls with new." When the New Year rolls around and my family that is planted in foreign soil joins together to eat hot pot and greet the new spring, my heart is filled with the feeling that we too are gathered around the hearth as a whole happy family to pass the New Year!