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Chinese New Year
Chinese New year is the most important festival in China. In Chinese language,
it is called ¡°Chun Jie¡±, the Spring Festival, or ¡°Nian¡±, which means year.
Chinese New Year obeys the lunar calendar. The New Year¡¯s Day will fall in
January or February on the Solar Calendar. It is the time to celebrate the
coming of the New Year and the upcoming spring season.
In the ancient fairy tale, ¡°Nian¡± was a monster that lived in the mountains. It
came to people¡¯s houses frequently, ate their cattle, and scared their babies.
People were tortured by this monster for a long time until a wise man thought of
an idea. He told people to set up large amount of fireworks outside of the
houses. The loud noise and the smoke generated by the firework scared ¡°Nian¡±
away from the villages. He never came back to people¡¯s residential area again.
It became a tradition for people to play fireworks every year at the Spring
Festival.
Chinese people celebrate the Spring Festival for half a month, from the 1st day
of the Lunar New Year all the way to the 15th day. ¡°Nian¡± is comparable to
Christmas in western tradition. It is the time for families to get together.
Usually no matter how far the children are away from home, they go home and
spend the time with the parents at Spring Festival. Every year there are
thousands of people traveling before the New Year time inside China, from south
to east, from north to south, and all over China, trying to get home to their
families. Chinese government makes special adjustment for this ¡°Spring Festival
Transportation¡± every year.
Chinese families begin to prepare for the festival several days before hand.
They prepare different snacks such as roasted sun flower seeds, preserved
fruits, and different candies. They decorate the houses by putting up big red
letters of ¡°Fu¡±, which means good luck. They do beautiful paper cut of flowers,
animals and put them on the windows. They clean the houses. They make sure
everything is neat and organized. They may also have the tailor make new clothes
or buy new clothes for the children in the family.
On the New Year Eve, a family cook a big meal with lots of delicious dishes,
then sits together to enjoy the food. The dishes include vegetables, meat, dry
foods such as rice noodles, mushrooms, dried lily flowers, see weed, and much
much more. One of the dish people like to put on the New Year eve¡¯s dinner table
is the fish, which in Chinese language sounds the same as ¡°more¡±. The fish
represents people¡¯s wishes of gaining more in the coming New Year. After the
dinner is ready, the whole family sit and eat, at the same time watch TV, and
chat. The CCTV (Central China TV) of China hold a big performance show every
year, and it used to be a tradition for a lot of families to watch this show
every year. The performances include acrobatics, singing, dancing, magic show,
and other forms of entertainment. Each year the show has a different theme
according to the zodiac. For example, 2005 is the year of the rooster and this
New Year show will feature rooster in a lot of performances. At mid-night,
people used to have fireworks¡¯ burning, which is a follow up of the tradition to
scare ¡°Nian¡± away. Nowadays in most big cities in China, firework is banned to
be played by individuals, the city government usually organizes a big firework
show for people to watch.
On the 1st day of the New Year, which is called ¡°Chun Jie¡±, or Spring Festival,
people go visit friends and relatives and say Happy New Year to each other.
Little children say happy New Year to their elders, and expect to get a small
red envelop with ¡°lucky money¡± in it. It is a Chinese tradition called ¡°Hong Bao¡±
(red envelop) giving. Another tradition is ¡°Chun Lian¡±, two parts of poetic
phase, in beautifully calligraphy on red paper, put up at each side of the door
of the house. People either write Chun Lian themselves, or have relatives and
friends write them, or hire somebody to write them. The contents are usually
prayers for good luck, good fortune for the coming new year.
As time goes by, some traditions of the Chinese new year are changing. Some
people work or study very far away from home may choose not to go back to visit
the parents. Some people work or study in foreign countries, some people are
inside China but live far away from their parents. They have work or study or
various reasons that they cannot make it back to their parents¡¯ at Chinese New
Year time. For the families that are together, some choose not to stay at home
and cook, they go to a restaurant and order a special Spring Festival dinner and
spend the New Year eve there. A lot of people don¡¯t do Chun Lian anymore. People
choose to give children gifts instead of money in Hongbao according to old
tradition. With the modern China developing fast, people also begin to emphasize
more on individualism. Some may not want to visit people on the 1st day of New
Year, or be visited. Some want to use the time to go traveling, to other cities,
or to the countryside, or even to foreign countries.
It¡¯s a bad thing that people are having more choices nowadays on celebrating
Spring Festival. But the tradition has its own attractiveness and I believe it
will be preserved through centuries to come.
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