Xiaohongshu
Zhixuan Sun (Cecilia) is an MSc student at UCL and a UCL Student Storyteller, writing about culture, memory and student life in London.
The moment I realised the Spring Festival was approaching in London was with the click and snap of Mahjong tiles.
At a UCL Mahjong Society gathering, the sound was fast and continuous. Without warning, my thoughts travelled home. Spring Festival mornings, when mahjong would start as soon as we woke up and never really stop. Relatives arriving with gifts. People talking over the click of tiles. Voices warming the room long before the heating ever could.
That sound has always meant one thing to me: reunion. Hearing it again in London, I realised the Spring Festival does not always arrive through grand celebrations. Sometimes it begins with a familiar sound and grows into something steadier. Small traditions, shared meals, and being with the people who matter most can make London feel like home.
Small traditions, shared meals, and being with the people who matter most can make London feel like home
The Year of the Horse
Originating in China and now celebrated across East and Southeast Asia and in diaspora communities worldwide, people are preparing to welcome the Year of the Horse on 17 February. In Chinese culture, the horse symbolises strength, swiftness and forward drive, echoed in wishes like “马到成功” (success) and “一马当先” (taking the lead). For many UCL students starting new chapters in London, that symbolism can feel unexpectedly fitting: a year shaped by resilience, momentum and a determination to keep moving forward.
For those who want a shared campus moment, the Students’ Union International Festival offers a Year of the Horse celebration at UCL on Monday 23 February, featuring a lion dance performance, food, calligraphy and other festivities.
What it has always meant to me
I grew up in Shandong, in a family where expectations were understood all year round: study hard, do well, keep moving forward. My father has never been a man of easy tenderness. But the Spring Festival was an exception.
Every year, he would take my hand and bring me to the market to choose the fu (福), a symbol of good fortune, and red couplets for our door. As a child, I often chose something overly cute, sometimes even a puffed-up, three-dimensional one that did not quite match. He never corrected me. He would simply smile, pay, and later put it up with me, side by side, as if my choice mattered more than getting it right.
We visited relatives together, and I was always the one gently sent forward to deliver the greetings. Red envelopes followed, along with the ritual of refusing them politely a few times, occasionally even running around the room to show I meant it. Later, my parents would sit at the mahjong table. For one day, there were no reminders about school, no targets to hit. Their only hope for me was happiness.
Celebrating in London, one bite at a time
For many UCL students, food is the fastest way to make the Spring Festival feel real.
“If we don’t have dumplings, it doesn’t feel like the Spring Festival,” says Han Meimei (a pseudonym). Last year, she taught a group of international friends how to wrap dumplings for the first time and found the irony hard to miss. “They were all very serious about it. Meanwhile, I had to admit that in my first year in the UK, I didn’t know how to wrap dumplings either.” She learned the way many students do, by calling her mum. “I held up a dumpling like a failed prototype and asked, ‘Is this acceptable?’ She told me how to fix it.”
For Han Meimei, the taste is only half of it. Each year, she keeps the CCTV Spring Festival Gala playing in the background, letting it fill the room like a familiar presence. “With the TV on, the distance feels smaller,” she says.
Traditions that make it feel real
Beyond food, the Spring Festival abroad often arrives through rituals, the small routines repeated year after year that make the day feel real.
Amy (pseudonym) is the organised type. Every year, she puts up the fu (福) and red couplets as early as she can, even in a rented flat. “I need to see it on the door,” she says. “Otherwise it just feels like another night.”
Han Meimei does it differently. Her New Year is built around people. Each year, she plans a reunion dinner with friends, assigns dishes, and insists on dumplings every year. “It’s not optional,” she says, half joking and fully serious. “Dumplings are the line between New Year and not New Year.”
For Li Hua (pseudonym), the most important moment is a shared one. He video calls home with his wife and young children, setting the phone on the table so everyone can fit into the frame. Together, they greet the older members of the family on the screen, exchanging New Year wishes and familiar reminders to eat well and rest properly. “At midnight, the messages start coming in,” he says. “Family, friends, people in different cities. We all send the same wishes at the same time.”
Finding meaning far from home
When you celebrate far from home, the Spring Festival can become more than a festival. It becomes a way of staying connected and a way of carrying something forward.
For Li Hua, that sense of responsibility is built into the day. Living in London with his wife and child, he thinks about the Spring Festival not only as a celebration, but as tradition passed on in real time. “When you’re overseas, you realise tradition doesn’t transmit itself,” he says. “You have to do it on purpose, especially with a child.” At home, he has a small rule. Before his children receive a red envelope, they have to say an auspicious greeting first. Li Hua laughs when he describes it, but he does not soften the point. “If we don’t make space for it here, it disappears.”
Han Meimei’s sense of meaning is simpler. “For me, the Spring Festival means reunion,” she says. Each year, she calls her parents on Spring Festival Eve in China, greeting them through a screen. “It’s not the same as being there,” she admits, “but it’s still us. We still say the same words.”
Bringing it home
By the end of the evening at Mahjong Society, the tiles were still clattering. conversations overlapped. Someone laughed too loudly. For a moment, it felt familiar enough to forget where I was.
The Spring Festival in London may arrive without firecrackers, without family gatherings, without the house you grew up in. But it still arrives, through sound, through food, through people choosing to gather.