The Spring Festival, the Lunar New Year, is the most important traditional national festival in China. It is called nian or xinnian (New Year) in Chinese. As originally written, the Chinese character nian means “harvest.” The Spring Festival always falls sometime before or after lichun (the beginning of Spring).

The celebration of the Spring Festival is more or less similar across the country. People set off firecrackers, which enliven the festival and bring great joy to people, especially to children. Chunlian are spring couplets posted on gates during the Spring Festival. They contain auspicious words such as: “The Best of Things and the Treasures of Heaven”; “Days of Peace, Year In, Year Out”; “A Spring of Good Fortune, This Year, and Every Year.” In addition, New Year pictures are a unique part of the New Year celebrations. Today, farmers and citizens in small towns still keep the customs of posting these on their doors or on the walls inside their rooms.

During the Spring Festival, the Chinese people eat a lot of good food. In North China, the most popular food is jiaozi, or dumplings. In South China, for breakfast on New Year’s Day, round rice glutinous dumplings are served to signify family reunion.

On the eve of he Spring Festival, it is a folk custom to stay up late or all night and pray for peace in the coming year. That night every house is brightly lit in the hope that anything that might bring people bad fortune will disappear under the dazzling light. New year is ushered in at midnight, 12 o’clock sharp. On that day, everybody, men and women, old and young, put on new clothes. When the younger generation extend their New Year greetings to their seniors, the latter give them money wrapped in red paper that is called yasuiqian (money to keep for the year). On the second day, after breakfast, there are exchanges of visits between friends and relatives who bring each other New Year cakes, oranges, tangerines, and crunchy candy as gifts. All in all, everyday from New Year’s Eve to the fifteenth day of the first month, there are various entertainments. Lion dances and drum and gong contests are grand events in the New Year celebrations, especially in the countryside in the South. Wedding ceremonies also abound in cities and villages throughout the land at this time.

This article by Yang Tianqing and Daniel Kister.