Elements of Spring Festival

New Year’s Eve dinner

On the night of New Year's Eve, Chinese families come together for a celebration dinner. This custom is also called "surrounding the hearth," from the custom in earlier times of eating dinner around the family hearth. Both children and adults eat together and dinner begins only after all of the family members are present at the table. A table setting is placed for those unable to come home for dinner on this day to symbolize their presence though far away.

As the nuclear family becomes an increasingly scarce phenomenon in modern society, this symbol of unity takes on increasing significance. New Year's Eve dinner is best eaten slowly, savoring the flavor of each dish. Several of the dishes served on this occasion have auspicious meaning and are indispensable to the night's menu: "Long Year Vegetables" (mustard greens) to represent intelligence; "Whole Chicken," symbolizing wealth for the whole family (since "chicken" and "family" rhyme in the Taiwanese dialect Chinese); and fish balls, shrimp balls, and meat balls are eaten to symbolize the three top scores earned during the civil service examination in ancient China and, by extension, success in educational pursuits. The only dish not included in the cornucopia of food eaten on the New Year's Eve dinner table is whole fish, which is intentionally left off the menu so that "there will be more to come in future years" (since the Chinese words for "fish" and "surplus" rhyme).

Some families will also prepare jiaozi, Chinese dumplings stuffed with meats and vegetables. Since the shape of the dumplings resembles a gold ingot, eating jiaozi symbolizes the calling of wealth into one's life, and some go even as far as to stuff real money in the dumplings to insure that the coming year will bring fortune.

(Source: chinaculture.org)

Firecracker

Since New Year’s Eve comes, the sound of firecrackers will not disappear. Playing firecrackers is the necessary custom in New Year’s Eve. There is a legend about firecrackers. Long long ago, a monster called Nian (means year) haunted around a peaceful village. He attacked the people and livestock in the village. The villagers had no idea to deal with the monster. They became very fearful and lived in danger. Until one day, a clever man invented an arm called firecracker. On one New Year’s Eve, he used firecrackers to defeat the Nian monster. In order to commemorate the man and his glory deeds, we play firecrackers and eat Nian cake every New Year’s eve. Nian cake, also called New Year cake, stands for Nian monster. Eating New Year’s cake means “we will live a better and better life yearly”. Though it is fun of playing firecrackers, we cannot play firecrackers without control in that playing firecrackers causes environmental pollution and safe problems.

Spring Festival Scrolls

New Year's Eve is the time to put up new Spring Festival couplets for the coming year.

Spring Festival couplets consist of two paper scrolls, inscribed with auspicious sayings, pasted vertically on either side of the door. A shorter horizontal scroll is often pasted across the top. Like images of door gods, Spring Festival couplets were thought to protect the household from evil.

According to ancient Chinese folk beliefs, ghosts and demons fear peach wood. Protective charms made of peach wood boards were therefore traditionally hung on either side of the door during the Lunar New Year festival. Later, images of the door gods Shen Tu and Yu Lei were painted on these boards. During the Five Dynasties Period, Meng Chang, the king of Shu, ordered the scholar Xin Yinxun to copy some of the king's poetry onto a peach wood door charm. However, Xin Yinxun did not approve of the king's literary effort, and instead inscribed the following lines of his own: "The New Year is filled with holiday cheer; celebrations proclaim the coming of Spring." This was China's first Spring Festival couplet. By the time of the Ming Dynasty, Spring Festival couplets were popular throughout Chinese society.

Spring Festival Gala on CCTV

Ever since its debut over two decades ago, the Spring Festival Gala has developed into an occasion that most Chinese find it hard to ignore at the New Year’s Eve.

New Year visit

Very early the first day of New Year, children greet their parents and receive their presents in terms of cash wrapped up in red paper packages from them. Then, the family start out to say greetings from door to door, first their relatives and then their neighbors. It is a great time for reconciliation. Old grudges are very easily cast away during the greetings. The air is permeated with warmth and friendliness. During and several days following the New Year's day, people are visiting each other, with a great deal of exchange of gifs.

Temple Fair

During the Spring Festival, temple fair is one of the most important activities, and a traditional cultural event that features all kinds of Chinese folk art. The fairs are held at various ancient temples, so they are called "temple fairs." Temple fairs, originated along with the development of Buddhist and Taoist activities, are a kind of mass gatherings that integrate religious worship, entertainment and commerce.

Chunyun

Chunyun refers to the extremely high traffic load of transportation in China around the time of Chinese New Year. The high traffic load usually begins 15 days before the Lunar New Year, and lasts for around 40 days. This period is also called Spring Festival travel season, or Chunyun period.

Sacrifice to the Kitchen God

The 23rd day of the 12th lunar month is called Preliminary Eve, or xiaonian (accurately on January 30 of the 2008 Gregorian calendar). It is the day when people offer sacrifices to the Kitchen God. Now however, most families make delicious food to enjoy themselves.

On this day, images of the Kitchen God are burned as a symbolic act of departure. Often some paper money is also burned for traveling expenses. Many Chinese hang above the stove a picture of the Kitchen God, who not only watches over the domestic affairs of a family, but is a moral force in the lives of all family members.

The Kitchen God is said to go to the Heaven to report the good and evils of the family on this day for the Jade Emperor (the Supreme Deity of Taoism) to give his rewards and punishments. Giving the Kitchen God a send-off, people offer sweets, pure water and soybeans, and even apply sugar on the mouth of the God's Idol so that he won't speak ill of the family.