New Year Celebration In China

One of the most important traditional festivals celebrated in China is the Chinese New Year commonly known as the Spring Festival. The celebration lasts for a period of sixteen days. Numerous rituals and customs are associated with the festival including preparing food, greetings one another, putting up decorations and gifts.

Thorough Cleaning of Houses

Before the start of Chinese New Year, people of China does pre-Chinese New Year preparations which involves thorough cleaning of their houses, as they do not perform cleaning activities in the starting two days of the year. They do so because they believe that cleaning will sweep away good luck from their houses.

Shopping

The pre-New Year Celebrations also include shopping activities in which people buy new clothes, food, snacks, and items for decoration before New Year’s Eve. This period is usually considered as a peak season for shopping. There is a general perception about Chinese people that they are thrifty but these people seem quite generous when they go out for shopping in this grand festival. Whether they have a need of buying anything or not they do spend their money on buying different stuff.

Decorating houses

People in China usually decorate their house and put up decorations on New Year’s Eve but many like to decorate several days before. The items of decorations include red lanterns, New Year paintings, and red couplets. As this year has been marked a year of “goat” in China, so people must be putting up paintings and images of goat for decorations.

Decorations with Paper Cutouts

Another interesting item of New Year’s Decoration in China is paper cutouts. These papers cutouts were placed on windows in a manner that it faces north and south before the celebration of spring festival. The creation of paper cutouts is rich that depicts rural life provided with the reason that majority buyers of this item are peasants. Commonly the cutouts are crafted displaying farming, fishing, raising chickens, weaving, and tending sheep. At times, Chinese operas, myths and legends are depicted through these paper cutouts.

Gathering at Dinner

It is essential in China that all the family members’ get together to enjoy New Year’s Eve Feast with their family members. Also the mandatory or “must do dinner” gathering causes huge travel rush across the country and people try hard to celebrate this event with their family.

“Lucky Money” for kids

In China, kids are provided or gifted with red envelopes containing certain amount of money in it, which is commonly referred as “Lucky Money”. The reason behind putting money in red envelopes is that, they believe that red color will bring luck to them as red color in China is commonly known as a symbol of luck.