Celebrating Chinese New Year major event
It’s the world’s most celebrated holiday
Today is the second day of Chinese New Year!
I want to greet you all in traditional Chinese loud and enthusiastic greetings: “过年
which simply means Happy New Year, “恭喜发财!” which stands for congratulations and be prosperous!
Chinese New Year is such an important holiday with thousands of years history that I could write for days about this topic. To say the least, only listing about Chinese greetings, I can fulfill the whole page! But the length of my column is limited. I’d like to share with you, my dearest readers, some major characteristics of it.
Chinese New Year (also called Spring Festival, Lunar New Year and so on) falls on the new moon between late-January and mid-February. It is the most important holiday in China. And the festival is a period of time, rather than a single day. Celebrations traditionally run from the evening before the first day to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first calendar month. But the official holiday begins at New Year’s Eve, and last for 7 consecutive days including weekends nowadays. According to the official announcement:
In terms of raw numbers in every category, the Chinese New Year is the largest human event on the planet. In the seven days of the Lunar New Year, Chinese are expected to spend more than $100 billion on eating and shopping (almost twice as much as Americans spend on Thanksgiving) and buy railway tickets online at a rate of more than 1,000 per second (China Daily, 2017).
Do you have any idea on why railway tickets are in great demand? That is because family reunion is the must-followed traditional custom. The lyrics of a popular song tell us: “Just go home for the Spring Festival, no matter you have money or not.”
Hundreds of millions of people travel across the country during that period to visit their ancestral hometowns in the world’s largest annual migration. Trains are sardine-packed with thousands of students and migrant labors. Highways all over the country are full of private cars, and sometimes in
some areas “armies of motorcycles” even mingle with them. Then traffic police officers must secure them all the way home. There is a same destination for these hundreds of millions people, HOME. Hence, we call
it a family holiday, but not so much a party holiday.
Interestingly, this custom comes from some ancient legends. The most famous one is a two thousand years old story about “Nian.”
Once upon a time, there was a beast called “Nian,” which has long tentacles on its head. He lives in the deep ocean, and sleeps every day of the year except the very last day of Lunar Year. Nian is so ferocious that he would come to the world on New Year’s Eve and eat whatever it could find and whatever lay in its path, especially children. And he is so powerful that nobody can defeat him. Year after year he returned. The terrified people have no choice but to take their beloved ones to hide in mountains. Then on one New Year’s Eve, an old man appeared before people went
into hiding and said that he was going to stay the night, and decided to get revenge on Nian. He covered a house with red paper and set off firecrackers endlessly. People surprisingly found out that the old man survived at night and Nian ran back into the sea.
Guess what? The secret of scaring the monster lies in the colour of red and the noises of firecrackers! Therefore people got together next year. They stayed up all night, lit firecrackers, lit red lanterns all around their houses, pasted red paper on their walls and doors, wore red clothing, prepared big feast, danced to loud music, and banged loud gongs and drums. From then on, Nian never came back to the world. And these eventually became traditions and the way to celebrate Chinese New Year.
There are still all kinds of activities during the holiday, among which at least three of them I would like to mention.
First of all, when the ancient bells in China ring for the New Year, all of the people, young and old, will get out of their houses, light crackers and fireworks, which decorates the sky into a colorful and magnificent stage, almost no other sound can be heard except the noises of firecrackers in the first half hour of the year.
Then, I’d like to say, on the morning of the New Year’s
Day, people get up very early to stick red couplets with all good wishes writing on them, and eat dumplings, which symbolize wealth because their shape resembles an ancient Chinese currency. Meanwhile, the red colour of the couplets and people’s clothes adds much to the joy of the splendid festival.
In certain areas of China, people have to visit their relatives from door to door as of the first day of the Spring Festival until the Lantern Festival (which is supposed to be a conclusion of the whole celebration). Unfortunately this tradition is only best inherited in the small towns and villages.
Oh, I will spare the other words for now. I hope this time next year we can continue our topic about Chinese New Year. I am going to tell you the story of the twelve creatures in Chinese zodiac. I even figured out the title of it! Shall we call it “the Pig is flying” (since next year is the year of Pig in Chinese zodiac)?
Finally I wish you all 心想事成，万事如意！(which means “May all your wishes be fulfilled!”)
Amy Li is a native of Beijing, China. She is studying Pre-MBA courses in ICEAP on the Cape Breton University Campus. Her column will appear monthly during which she hopes to share with readers stories about China and also comment on the people, places and customs she discovers during her stay in Cape Breton.