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Chinese Name: 春节
English Name: Chinese New Year, Spring Festival
Time & Duration: The first day of the first lunar month 农历月
Customs: Paste couplets(Chinese: 贴春联), Family reunion dinner(Chinese: 团圆饭), Lucky money collection(Chinese: 收压岁钱), etc.
Brief introduction
Chinese New Year 春节 is the most solemn traditional festival of the Chinese nation. It not only embodies the Chinese nation’s ideological beliefs, ideals and aspirations, life entertainment and cultural psychology, but also a carnival-style display of blessings and disaster avoidance, food and entertainment activities.
During the Spring Festival, various Lunar New Year activities are held all over the country. Due to different regional cultures, there are differences in customs content or details, with strong regional characteristics. The celebration activities during the Spring Festival are extremely rich and varied, including lion dance舞狮, dragon dance舞龙, Miaohui庙会, lantern viewing, etc.
In the early days of the Spring Festival, people began to clean up, buy New Year’s goods, Paste couplets, put up lanterns, etc. All these activities have a common theme, that is, “saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new”.
The Spring Festival is a festival of joy, harmony and family reunion. It is also a carnival and eternal spiritual pillar for people to express their yearning for happiness and freedom. The Spring Festival is also a day for the ancestors to worship their ancestors and make sacrifices to pray for the new year. Sacrifice is a kind of belief activity, which is a belief activity created by human beings in ancient times to live in harmony with the natural world.
The origin of the Chinese New Year
The Spring Festival evolved from the prayers and sacrifices at the beginning of the year. In ancient times, people in ancient times held sacrificial activities to pay tribute to the gods of heaven and earth and the kindness of ancestors, to exorcise evil spirits, avoid disasters. and pray for good fortune.
The origin and development of the Spring Festival is a process of gradual formation, subtle improvement and popularization. As an important part of Chinese traditional culture, Spring Festival culture carries the profound Chinese cultural heritage and records the rich and colourful social life and cultural content of ancient people.
Folk-Custom Activity
Stocking up for Chinese New Year 囤货过年
Chinese New Year’s customs have a long history, and various New Year’s customs have been derived from all over the country. Although customs vary from place to place, preparing New Year’s goods and giving New Year’s gifts are “must-haves for New Year’s Eve” all over the country. Buying New Year’s goods, including food, clothes, wear, use, stickers (New Year’s Day), gifts (New Year’s greetings), etc., are collectively called “New Year’s Goods”, the process of purchasing New Year’s goods is called “organizing New Year’s goods”. Organizing New Year’s goods is an important activity for Chinese people to celebrate the Spring Festival.
Lucky money collection 收压岁钱
The elders will put some money into red packets, and then hand out to the younger generation during the spring festival. It is said that the lucky money can suppress evil spirits, and the younger generation can live a year in peace with the lucky money. In recent years, electric red packets are popular among the younger generation.
Paste couplets 贴春联
Spring Festival couplets are one of the red festive elements “Nianhong” posted during the Chinese New Year. It depicts beautiful images and expresses good wishes with neat, concise and delicate words. It is a unique literary form in China and an important Chinese New Year custom. Posting Spring Festival couplets expresses the good wishes of the Chinese working people to ward off evil and disasters and welcome good luck.
A family Reunion Dinner 团圆饭
After putting up couplets and pictures in the doors on the Lunar New Year’s Eve, the last day of the twelfth moon in the Chinese lunar calendar, each family gathers for a sumptuous meal called ‘family reunion dinner’. People will enjoy the food and drink in abundance.
The meal is more luxurious than usual. Dishes such as chicken, fish and bean curd are necessary for the Chinese, their pronunciations sound like ‘Ji’, ‘Yu’, and ‘Doufu’, with the meanings of auspicious, abundant and rich. Sons and daughters working away from home come back to join their parents.
Watching the Spring Festival Gala
The Spring Festival Gala, as a TV program that hundreds of millions of Chinese and overseas Chinese have paid attention to, has witnessed the historic changes since China’s reform and opening up.In the last century, the living standards of the Chinese people were only at the point where the level of food and clothing has just been solved, and there is no spare capacity to focus on the improvement of their own culture and other aspects.
Therefore, the Spring Festival Gala, as the TV program with the widest coverage, can be said to be a household name during the special time period of the Spring Festival. Since then, watching the Spring Festival Gala has become one of the customs of the Spring Festival, and the Spring Festival has the custom of keeping the year old. relation.
