Editor's note: the GDToday team spent a day with several expats who are working and living in different cities of Guangdong and present how they are preparing for the Chinese New Year despite of the back-and-forth Covid-19 pandemic through the 'My Chinese New Year Style' series.

"Poon choi!" when asked for a must-try for the Spring Festival, Ziv Glikman, an Israeli who had been in Dongguan for 17 years, gave his answer without hesitation. As a featured dish in South China for celebrating the Spring Festival, Poon choi is composed of many layers of different ingredients such as meats, seafood and vegetables. For Ziv, the Spring Festival also means a lot.

(Photo by Li Lin, Southern Metropolis Daily)

Finding the connection

The Chinese New Year is also very important for Ziv Glikman as an expat. This year, Ziv and his partner Billy will keep organizing their traditional CNY potluck in his bar.

"We like the locals and foreigners to both come together. And each one brings their own food", this is the way that Ziv celebrates the Spring Festival in China every year.

"I always thought the Chinese and Jewish people are very similar in a few things. For instance, family is very important. On the holidays we have big dinners, together with the family".

Over the years, Ziv has been working hard to promote Chinese culture, including Chinese New Year. And now he has some interesting findings.

"It's quite similar. For example, in Israel we eat apples with honey which symbolizes the year will be sweet. We need to eat the fish head so we want to be the head and not the tail", Ziv found out that both Jewish culture and Chinese culture, two of the oldest cultures in the world would use similar symbols to express best wishes for the new year.

A new Dongguaner

Ziv would like others to call him 'Xin Guan Ren', literally means 'a new Dongguaner'. For 15 years he has been making content in Dongguan, covering a lot of Dongguan culture. Around 2005, he started up the brand "HERE".

“In the beginning, I felt like there were many foreigners in Dongguan but there was not enough English guidance for them. So, I thought, if I need that, there must be more people that need that.”

Talking about the process of founding “HERE”, Ziv can still find the passion. “I was young and I was excited about the city’s increasing international flavor. New restaurants and bars were slowly popping up, international schools were opening and new hotels, as always, kept showing up all over town. People could feel it in the air. Dongguan was becoming a good place to live”.

Now Ziv has a happy family and with his two children he has become accustomed to life in Dongguan.

“My children, right now they go to Chinese school. They were born here in Dongguan so they went to Chinese kindergarten. I want them to go to Chinese school”. Ziv felt that his children get more discipline, more independence and more importantly they can learn more Chinese language. But he also thought that maybe in later years in life, maybe middle school, high school, his children may need to move to international school.

“Our kids are called third culture kids. Our kids developed the culture of their own. I enjoy talking to other parents about this kind of parenting issues. If families are coming to China, they would like to know that too”.

Expectations for the new year

Now, Ziv has become an active content-producer in multiple social media platforms such as YouTube, Kuaishou and Bilibili. His daughter Dani also got 400 thousand views on one of her Kuaishou videos.

“I always encourage my children to create, to make videos, to write an article because this is the new world. The world now is (about) social media, is (about) computers. Even though I don’t really understand this trend, I am happy for them.”

As the Year of the Ox is around the corner, Ziv also shared his new year wishes. He hopes that the content and videos he has worked hard to make can successfully attract more people. More importantly, he hopes that his parents can come to China to visit their grandchildren, and he also hopes to be happy and healthy with his family.

Co-produced by GDToday and Southern Metropolis Daily

Reporter: Keane, Li Lin, Wu Jialin, Russell Hou (Intern), Xie Qinfeng (Intern),

Editor: Jerry Grey, Hannah Zhou

English Subtitles: GDUFS Chinese Cultural Story Exchange Group