Spring Festival

Spring Festival

The first day of the first lunar month is regarded as the Chinese New Year - the Spring Festival. It is the most important and ceremonious traditional festival in China. It's importance is equivalent to Christmas Day for westerners.

During the Spring Festival, every family is busy cleaning the house in the hope of getting rid of defilements and preventing diseases. They also paste spring festival god couplets on the door with the reverse Chinese character "Fu" (meaning blessing) and hang flags with the hope and prayer for prosperity in the New Year. On New Year's Eve, every family enjoys a grand dinner, shoots off firecrackers, performs dragon and lion dances, and stays up late if not all night. People will pay a New Year call to one another from the first day of the Spring Festival until the 15th day of the 1st lunar month when a Lantern Festival is held and the Spring Festival is ended.

On New Year's Eve, people who work far away manage to come home regardless of long-distance travel. For this reason the "Grand Dinner on New Year's Eve" is also called the "Family Reunion Dinner". Whatever the financial condition is, every family will make this dinner the most sumptuous and ceremonious one of the year. Hostesses fetch foodstuffs to prepare early and all family members will sit together and make dumplings in jollification. At twelve o'clock, when the new year drives off the old, every family shoots off firecrackers to greet new days and send off old ones.

Following the New Year's Eve is the first day of the Spring Festival, a day for paying respects to the New Year. This is called bainian, during which people will be busy in giving best wishes to one another by saying such auspicious phrases as "Happy New Year" and "May you be prosperous". On New Year's day, elders will put money in a red pocket called yasuiqian and give it to children as a gift. It is believed that on New Year's Day attention should be paid to ensure not to break anything or else one will miss good fortunes throughout the whole year, and sweeping the floor will sweep off wealth and drive away good luck.

Traditional food prepared for the Spring Festival varies with customs in different regions. However, those with auspicious names, meanings or shapes are favored, such as "New Year Cake" (niangao in Chinese, means "higher year", suggesting better fortune in the new year, and has the shape of gold and silver blocks). Dumplings, the shape of which is similar to ingots, suggests bringing wealth and treasure to the new year, and fish symbolizes amassing fortunes.

According to history records, the Spring Festival derives from god and ancestor worship in the Shang dynasty. Nowadays, this superstitious meaning has faded away and has been replaced with a symbol of unification, happiness and hope.

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