A
History Of The Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year
or Spring Festival is the most important of the
traditional Chinese holidays. It is sometimes called
the "Lunar New Year" by English speakers. The
festival traditionally begins on the first day of
the first month (Chinese: 正月; pinyin: zhēng yuè) in
the Chinese calendar and ends on the 15th; this day
is called Lantern Festival. Chinese New Year's Eve
is known as chú xī. It literally means "Year-pass
Eve".
Chinese New Year is the longest and most important
festivity in the Lunar Calendar. The origin of
Chinese New Year is itself centuries old and gains
significance because of several myths and
traditions. Ancient Chinese New Year is a reflection
on how the people behaved and what they believed in
the most.
Celebrated in areas with large populations of ethnic
Chinese, Chinese New Year is considered a major
holiday for the Chinese and has had influence on the
new year celebrations of its geographic neighbors,
as well as cultures with whom the Chinese have had
extensive interaction. These include Koreans (Seollal),
Tibetans and Bhutanese (Losar), Mongolians (Tsagaan
Sar), Vietnamese (Tết), and formerly the Japanese
before 1873 (Oshogatsu). Outside of Mainland China,
Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, Chinese New Year is
also celebrated in countries with significant Han
Chinese populations, such as Singapore, Indonesia,
Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. In
countries such as Australia, Canada and the United
States, although Chinese New Year is not an official
holiday, many ethnic Chinese hold large celebrations
and Australia Post, Canada Post, and the US Postal
Service issues New Year's themed stamps.
Within China, regional customs and traditions
concerning the celebration of the Chinese new year
vary widely. People will pour out their money to buy
presents, decoration, material, food, and clothing.
It is also the tradition that every family
thoroughly cleans the house to sweep away any
ill-fortune in hopes to make way for good incoming
luck. Windows and doors will be decorated with red
colour paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes
of “happiness”, “wealth”, and “longevity”. On the
Eve of Chinese New Year, supper is a feast with
families. Food will range from pigs, to ducks, to
chicken and sweet delicacies. The family will end
the night with firecrackers. Early the next morning,
children will greet their parents by wishing them a
healthy and happy new year, and receive money in red
paper envelopes. The Chinese New Year tradition is a
great way to reconcile forgetting all grudges, and
sincerely wish peace and happiness for everyone.
Although the Chinese calendar traditionally does not
use continuously numbered years, outside China its
years are often numbered from the reign of Huangdi.
But at least three different years numbered 1 are
now used by various scholars, making the year 2009
"Chinese Year" 4707, 4706, or 4646
According to tales and
legends
According to tales and legends, the beginning of Chinese
New Year started with the fight against a mythical beast
called the Nien (Chinese: 年; pinyin: nián). Nien would
come on the first day of New Year to devour livestock,
crops, and even villagers, especially children. To
protect themselves, the villagers would put food in
front of their doors at the beginning of every year. It
was believed that after the Nien ate the food they
prepared, it wouldn’t attack any more people. One time,
people saw that the Nien was scared away by a little
child wearing red. The villagers then understood that
the Nien was afraid of the colour red. Hence, every time
when the New Year was about to come, the villagers would
hang red lanterns and red spring scrolls on windows and
doors. People also used firecrackers to frighten away
the Nien. From then on, Nien never came to the village
again. The Nien was eventually captured by hong jun lao
zu, an ancient Taoist monk. The Nien became hong jun lao
zu's mount.
The
Chinese New Year Cycle
The
period around Chinese New Year is also the time of the
largest human migration, when migrant workers in China,
as well as overseas Chinese around the world travel home
to have reunion dinners with their families on Chinese
New Year's Eve. More interurban trips are taken in
mainland China in this 40-day period than the total
population of China. This period is called chunyun (春運
or 春运, Pinyin: chūn yùn).
First Day Of
Chinese New Year
The first day is for the welcoming of the deities of the
heavens and earth, officially beginning at midnight.
Many people, especially Buddhists, abstain from meat
consumption on the first day because it is believed that
this will ensure longevity for them. Some consider
lighting fires and using knives to be bad luck on New
Year's Day, so all food to be consumed is cooked the day
before. For Buddhists, the first day is also the
birthday of Maitreya Bodhisattva (better known as the
more familiar Budai Luohan), the Buddha-to-be. People
also abstain from killing animals.
Most importantly, the first day of Chinese New Year is a
time when families visit the oldest and most senior
members of their extended family, usually their parents,
grandparents or great-grandparents.
Some families may invite a lion dance troupe as a
symbolic ritual to usher in the Lunar New Year as well
as to evict bad spirits from the premises. Members of
the family who are married also give red packets
containing cash to junior members of the family, mostly
children and teenagers.
While fireworks and firecrackers are traditionally very
popular, some regions have banned them due to concerns
over fire hazards, which have resulted in increased
number of fires around New Years and challenged
municipal fire departments' work capacity. For this
reason, various city governments (e.g., Hong Kong, and
Beijing, for a number of years) issued bans over
fireworks and firecrackers in certain premises of the
city. As a substitute, large-scale fireworks have been
launched by governments in cities like Hong Kong to
offer citizens the experience.
The Second
Day Of Chinese New Year
Second day Incense is burned at the graves of ancestors
as part of the offering and prayer ritual.
The second day of the Chinese New Year is for married
daughters to visit their birth parents. Traditionally,
daughters who have been married may not have the
opportunity to visit their birth families frequently.
On the second day, the Chinese pray to their ancestors
as well as to all the gods. They are extra kind to dogs
and feed them well as it is believed that the second day
is the birthday of all dogs.
Business people of the Cantonese dialect group will hold
a 'Hoi Nin' prayer to start their business on the 2nd
day of Chinese New Year. The prayer is done to pray that
they will be blessed with good luck and prosperity in
their business for the year.
[edit] Third and fourth days
The third and fourth day of the Chinese New Year are
generally accepted as inappropriate days to visit
relatives and friends due to the following schools of
thought. People may subscribe to one or both thoughts.
- 1) It is known as "chì kǒu" (赤口), meaning that it is easy to get
into arguments. It is suggested that the cause could
be the fried food and visiting during the first two
days of the New Year celebration.
- 2) Families who had an immediate kin deceased in the past 3
years will not go house-visiting as a form of
respect to the dead, but people may visit them on
this day. Some people then conclude that it is
inauspicious to do any house visiting at all. The
third day of the New Year is allocated to
grave-visiting instead.
The Fifth Day Of
Chinese New Year
Fifth day: In northern China, people eat jiǎo zi
(simplified Chinese: 饺子; traditional Chinese: 餃子),
or dumplings on the morning of Po Wu (破五). This is
also the birthday of the Chinese god of wealth. In
Taiwan, businesses traditionally re-open on this
day, accompanied by firecrackers.
The
Seventh Day Of Chinese New Year
The seventh day, traditionally known as renri 人日,
the common man's birthday, the day when everyone
grows one year older. It is the day when tossed raw
fish salad, yusheng, is eaten. This is a custom
primarily among the overseas Chinese in Southeast
Asia, such as Malaysia and Singapore. People get
together to toss the colourful salad and make wishes
for continued wealth and prosperity.
For many Chinese Buddhists, this is another day to
avoid meat, the seventh day commemorating the birth
of Sakra Devanam Indra.
Chinese New Year's celebrations, on the eighth day,
in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond, British
Columbia, Canada.
The
Eighth Day Of Chinese New Year
Eighth day: Another family dinner to celebrate the eve of the
birth of the Jade Emperor. However, everybody should
be back to work by the 8th day. All of government
agencies and business will stop celebrating by the
eighth day.
The
Ninth Day Of Chinese New Year
The ninth day of the New Year is a day for Chinese
to offer prayers to the Jade Emperor of Heaven (天宮)
in the Taoist Pantheon. The ninth day is
traditionally the birthday of the Jade Emperor. This
day is especially important to Hokkiens. Come
midnight of the eighth day of the new year, Hokkiens
will offer thanks giving prayers to the Emperor of
Heaven. Offerings will include sugarcane as it was
the sugarcane that had protected the Hokkiens from
certain extermination generations ago. Incense, tea,
fruit, vegetarian food or roast pig, and paper gold
is served as a customary protocol for paying respect
to an honored person.
The Tenth Day Of The Chinese New Year
The Tenth day is the other day when the Jade
Emperor's birthday is celebrated.
The Thirteenth Day Of The Chinese New Year
On the 13th day people will eat pure vegetarian food
to clean out their stomach due to consuming too much
food over the last two weeks.
This day is dedicated to the General Guan Yu, also
known as the Chinese God of War. Guan Yu was born in
the Han dynasty and is considered the greatest
general in Chinese history. He represents loyalty,
strength, truth, and justice. According to history,
he was tricked by the enemy and was beheaded.
Almost every organization and business in China will
pray to Guan Yu on this day. Before his life ended,
Guan Yu had won over one hundred battles and that is
a goal that all businesses in China want to
accomplish. In a way, people look at him as the God
of Wealth or the God of Success.
The Fifteenth Day Of The Chinese New Year
The fifteenth day of the new year is celebrated as
yuán xiāo jié (元宵节), otherwise known as Chap Goh Mei
in Fujian dialect. Rice dumplings tangyuan
(simplified Chinese: 汤圆; traditional Chinese: 湯圓;
pinyin: tāngyuán), a sweet glutinous rice ball
brewed in a soup, is eaten this day. Candles are lit
outside houses as a way to guide wayward spirits
home. This day is celebrated as the Lantern
Festival, and families walk the street carrying
lighted lanterns.
This 15th day often marks the end of the Chinese New
Year festivities.
