Chinese Spring Festival

Chinese New Year, Lunar New Year, commonly known as Chinese New Year, generally from the 23^rd day of December in Lunar Year(Simplfied Chinese:祭灶) to the fifteenth day of the new year. During the 23 days, the New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are the highlights of the whole festival.Spring festival is the longest holiday and most important festival in China,whole Chinese people celebrate the festival no matter where they are,at home or abroad.Here,we'd like to take you a glance at Chinese Spring Festival.

The origin of Spring festival

The first day in a lunar year is picked as the spring festival(simplfied Chinese:春节)As the oldest history recorded, it's been 4000 years from the first time Chinese celebrated this festival.

There are quite a few stories about the origin of spring festival,among them,majority Chinese people believe the festival stems from YuShun(simplified Chinese: 虞舜).One day in 2000 years ago,Shun (舜) became the emperor of China,he lead his officials worshipped the gods.From then on,people took that day as the first day of the year,this is maybe how old spring festival comes.

Spring Festival in Chinese history

Chinese New Year in different eras have different names.In the pre-Qin time called the "previous day", "Mongol", "reform-year-old", "Xian-year-old", etc,to the Han Dynasty, also called the "dynasties", "old Dan", "Zheng Dan", "day" ,Wei, Jin and Northern and Southern Dynasties referred to as "meta-chen", "Mongol", "head of state", "Year of North Korea", etc.; to the Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming, then known as the "New Year's Day," "Dollars" or "old days", "new positive "," S "and so on; while the Qing Dynasty, has been called the" New Year's Day "or" Mongol."Nowadays,we call spring festival "春节 chunjie" or "过年guonian" in Chinese.

In 1912,Sun Yat-sen became provisional president in Nanjing,the Republic of China announced the abolition of the old calendar and switched to solar calendar,and decided to take the 1912 as the first year of the Republic,January 1st.1912 as the first spring festival.So the spring festival which Chinese people are having is dated back from 1912,(not old spring festival),till now,Chinese people have been celebrating new spring festival for 97 years.

How the Chinese people spend the Spring Festival

China is a multi-ethnic country, there are 56 ethnic minorities in China.Nearly every ethnic minority has its own way to celebrate the festival. Han, Manchu and Korean people have commons on how to spend the festival,they enjoy family reunions,dining around table, eat rice cakes, dumplings and a variety of sumptuous meals.they decorate their houses, fire firecrackers and bless each other for a good fortune or a fruitful new year. The activities of celebration are extremely rich and varied,lion dance, playing the dragon,pasting papercuttings.In some areas, people follow the way how ancestors worship the god to pray for the new year, good weather, peace and good harvest.

For children,it's always a sweet festival,they can get new clothes from their parents,get Yasuiqian (simplied Chinese: 压岁钱) from senior relatives.Kids sing,dance and play together for this winter vacation.(winter vacation overlap with Chinese spring festival,when holiday ends,children go back to school.)

With the time goes by,the spring festival is coming soon,let's have our fingers crossed and hope for a healthy and fruitful new year!