The Spring Festival
The Spring Festival is the first biggest traditional Chinese festival based on the lunar calendar. The Spring Festival, also called Chinese New Year, has more than 4,000 years of history. As one of the traditional Chinese festivals, it is the grandest and the most significant one for Chinese people and many other Chinese-speaking communities. The Spring Festival is the time for bidding farewell to the old and ushering in the new. Also, it is the time for family reunion, which is equivalent to Christmas of the West. It symbolizes the coming of spring which brings hope, new beginning and vitality to the world.
The festival usually starts on the first day of Chinese lunar calendar and lasts for almost half a month, from the first day to the 15th day of the first lunar month. And the 15th day is known as the Lantern Festival. But in folk customs, two weeks before the festival, the whole country has already been permeated with a festive atmosphere. People often celebrate this festival from the 23rd day of the 12th month to the 15th day of the first month according to the lunar calendar. Among these days, the Spring Festival Eve and the lunar New Year's Day, the first day of the lunar year, are the peak time. Then, what do Chinese people usually do to celebrate the Spring Festival?
Spring Festival Eve Dinner
The Spring Festival Eve dinner, a reunion dinner, is an extremely important part in the Spring Festival traditions. Since Chinese New Year is a time for families to be together, a reunion dinner is quite necessary and indispensable for all the Chinese people. Therefore, wherever they are, people will do whatever they can to go home just for this feast called “family reunion dinner”. This reunion dinner is more luxurious than usual and is held on the Spring Festival Eve. On this occasion, all the family members of several generations sit around the tables and enjoy the food together.
The kinds of food will be different from family to family, but some dishes are more popular in some areas. Many families have fish, as the Chinese word for fish is yu, which is a play on words for abundance, and so eating fish means that they wish to have an abundant year. Another popular dish is niangao. This is a sweet cake, which is eaten because its name is a play on the Chinese word for better year. In northern China, the most popular New Year's food is jiaozi, dumplings which are often filled with meat and vegetables. Of course, jiaozi is famous as a food that people in northern China eat all year round. However, having them at New Year is special because often the whole family will spend some time sitting at a table making that night's jiaozi together. This custom comes from the Chinese characters for jiaozi. Part of the character for jiao means to cross over, while the character for zi can mean the time between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. So, the word jiaozi is said to mean the crossing over from one year to the next, or saying goodbye to the past and welcoming the future.
After the dinner, all members of the big family often watch together the Spring Festival Gala on CCTV. It is also a custom that all people stay up late on the Spring Festival Eve, waiting for the New Year's bell at midnight. And about 10 minutes before the ringing of the New Year's bell, people set off fireworks to welcome the coming of the new year.
Setting Off Fireworks
Traditionally, people set off fireworks for celebration during the whole Spring Festival holiday. The peak celebration often comes with cheers, endless firecrackers and fireworks. Firecrackers, along with fireworks, originated from China. In ancient China, they were used to scare away wild animals and evil spirits. With the invention of the gunpowder, firecrackers are also used in festivals and big events for a joyful and festive atmosphere. In the Spring Festival, people set off firecrackers and fireworks for bidding farewell to the old year and welcoming the new year.
The Red Sea
Red, in Chinese people's eyes, symbolizes good luck and happiness. Hence, when the Spring Festival comes, red is the main color for the festival because it is believed to be an auspicious color. In the Spring Festival, many people wear red clothes; every street, building, and house is decorated with red; red lanterns are commonly seen in streets; red spring couplets, paper-cuts and New Year's paintings are pasted on doors; and kids get lucky money which is put in red envelopes.
However, in the eyes of most Westerners, red is a color associated with blood and it symbolizes cruelty, war, violence and radicalism, such as a red battle (a cruel battle in which a lot of lives have been lost), to have red hands (to commit a murder), the red revolution (the radical, violent revolution), the red activities (the left-wing radical activities). Some Westerners take red as an evil omen, stemming from the spirits of bullfighters. So the red flag that bullfighters use to provoke bulls is considered annoying. It also symbolizes danger and alarm, such as the red alert (alarming in emergency), in the red (in debt) and red ink (deficit). It is said that even David Hawkes, the well-known sinologist, translated the title of《红楼梦》into The Story of the Stone in order to avoid the negative meanings the color red might bring to the English readers.