1. What is Chinese Spring Festival?
The oldest and most important festival in China is the Spring Festival, which marks a new year on the lunar calendar. The name of the Spring Festival in Chinese is ´guo nian´.
´Guo´means pass, and ´nian´means year. The origins of ´Guo Nian´
can be traced back thousands of years.
除夕Lunar New Year´s Eve
Lunar New Year's Eve, the last day of the old year, is one of China's most important traditional holidays. Homes are spotless in and out, doors and windows are decorated with brand new Spring Festival couplets, New Year's pictures, hangings, and images of the Door God, and everyone dresses up in new holiday clothes that are decorated with lucky patterns and auspicious colors.
To the Chinese, New Year's Eve dinner is more than just enjoying a grand feast. On this day, all Chinese all over the world, no matter how far away from home they are or how busy at work, will be home for dinner.
The elaborate dinner is laden with auspicious food. The names of the dishes express the
wish for good luck in the coming year. Most dishes are prepared with uncut or whole ingredients to ensure integrity and perfection. The use of knives is considered unlucky as this could sever the family's good fortune.
The sumptuous New Year dinners are prepared with the most delicate culinary artistic skill and good wishes to welcome relatives and friends with a choice of festive treats. Today, a growing number of Chinese choose to have reunion dinners at restaurants or invite cooks home to make dinners for them.
春运[Chūn yùn]
Chunyun (the high traffic load around Chinese New Year)
Spring Festival travel season
The Spring Festival is the most important festival for the Chinese people and is when all family members get together, just like Christmas in the West. All people living away from home go back, becoming the busiest time for transportation systems of about half a month from the Spring Festival Airports, railway stations and long-distance bus stations are crowded with home returnees.
实名制:China implements real-name policy for train tickets
China implemented the real-name policy for bullet train tickets back in June, 2011. In order to crack down on ticket scalping and to alleviate the pressure of the Spring Festival travel rush, the system is now being expanded to all train tickets. Getting a train ticket for the journey home. This is thewish of hundreds of millions of Chinese people. But to getting a train ticket during the Spring Festival travel rush, this is no easy task. In order to combat ticket scalping and alleviate the pressure of the travel rush, a real-name system comes into effect from the first day of 2012.
2 春联Spring Couplets
On the Chinese New Year, while pairs of the door gods are pasted in the center of the door, spring couplets are pasted on each side of the door and propitious words across the lintel at the top, expressing the feeling of life's renewal and the return of spring.
剪纸Papercuts
Papercuts refer to handicrafts made by cutting paper with scissors to form different patterns and pasting them on walls, windows, doors and ceilings. With their long history, papercuts, which originated in China, have been very popular among the ordinary people of China. The first papercut can be traced back to the Northern and Southern Dynasties (386-581) period. The initiation and spread of papercuts had a close relationship with Chinese rural festivals. People pasted papercuts on walls, windows and doors at wedding ceremonies or festivals to enhance the festive atmosphere.
倒贴福字
The Chinese character "fu" (meaning blessing or happiness) is a must. The character put on paper can be pasted normally or upside down, for in Chinese the "reversed fu" is homophonic with "fu comes", both being pronounced as "fudaole." What's more, two big red lanterns can be raised on both sides of the front door. Red paper-cuttings can be seen on window glass and brightly colored New Year paintings with auspicious meanings may be put on the wall.
放鞭炮
Burning fireworks was once the most typical custom on the Spring Festival. People thought the spluttering sound could help drive away evil spirits. However, such an activity was completely or partially forbidden in big cities once the government took security, noise and pollution factors into consideration. As a replacement, some buy tapes with firecracker sounds to listen to, some break little balloons to get the sound too, while others buy firecracker handicrafts to hang in the living room.
春(chūn)节(jié)联(lián)欢(huān) 晚(wǎn)会(huì)
33th anniversary of 2015 CCTV Spring Festival Gala
The annual CCTV Spring Festival Gala began at 8 p.m. Beijing Time on 18th Feb.
attracting people’s attention across China.
The extravaganza broadcasted live on CCTV Channel 1 and 4, as well as the English, Spanish and French channels and online at cctv.com and xinhuanet.com. 39 programs were performed on the gala, including songs, dances, cross-talks and short sketches. The annual CCTV Spring Festival Gala has been a must-watch for many families on New Year’s Eve ever since it’s first broadcast three decades ago.
3 饺子
Jiaozi(Chinese Dumpling) is a traditional Chinese Food, which is essential during holidays in Northern China. Chinese dumpling becomes one of the most widely loved foods in China.
Chinese dumpling is one of the most important foods in Chinese New Year. Since the shape of Chinese dumplings is similar to ancient Chinese gold or silver ingots, they symbolize wealth. Traditionally, all family members get together to make dumplings during the New Year's Eve. They may hide a coin in one of the dumplings. The person who finds the coin will likely have a good fortune in the New Year. Chinese dumpling is also popular in other Chinese holidays or festivals, so it is part of the Chinese culture or tradition.
Chinese dumpling is a delicious food. You can make a variety of Chinese dumplings using different fillings based on your taste and how various ingredients mixed together by yourself. Usually when you have Chinese dumpling for dinner, you will not have to cook anything else except for some big occasions. The dumpling itself is good enough for dinner. This is one of the advantages of Chinese dumpling over other foods, though it may take longer to make them.
Making dumplings is really teamwork. Usually all family members will join the work. Some people started to make dumplings when they were kids in the family, so most Chinese know how to make dumplings.
大年初一Lunar New Year´s Day
Lunar New Year's Day is the first day of the year, according to the traditional lunar calendar. With the adoption of the solar calendar, New Year's Day came to refer to the first day of the solar year. In order to distinguish the two, Lunar New Year's Day is sometimes referred to as Spring Festival. The Lunar New Year is China's most important traditional holiday.
However, this holiday is not just one day; rather it encompasses an extended period of time, often lasting until the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. The first five days after the Spring Festival are a good time for relatives, friends, and classmates as well as colleagues to exchange greetings, gifts and chat leisurely.
The lively atmosphere not only fills every household, but permeates to streets and lanes. A series of activities such as lion dancing, dragon lantern dancing, lantern festivals and temple fairs will be held for days. The Spring Festival then comes to an end when the Lantern Festival is finished.
China has 56 ethnic groups. Minorities celebrate their Spring Festival almost the same day as the Han people, and they have different customs.
Waking up on New Year, everybody dresses up. First they extend greetings to their parents. Then each child will get money as a New Year gift, wrapped up in red paper. People innorthern China will eat jiaozi, or dumplings, for breakfast, as they think "jiaozi" in 4 sound means "bidding farewell to the old and ushering in the new". Also, the shape of the dumpling is like gold ingot from ancient China. So people eat them and wish for money and treasure.
In northern China, the first meal of the New Year is boiled jiaozi (stuffed dumplings). Southern Chinese eat niangao (New Year cake made of glutinous rice flour). Because In Chinese, niangao is a homonym of the phrase "higher every year," signifying the wish for steadily increasing prosperity.
元宵节
Lantern Festival
Lantern Festival falls on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. This is the first full moonof the New Year, symbolizing unity and perfection. Lantern Festival is an important part of
Spring Festival, and marks the official end of the long holiday.
元宵[yuán xiāo]
Tangyuan/Yuanxiao is special treats for southerners. Made of sticky rice flour filled with sweet or savory stuffing and round in shape, Tangyuan symbolizes family unity, completeness and happiness.