Celebration

Lunar New Year is the biggest and the most important holiday in China. In the northeast of China, the celebration which starts 7 days before the Lunar New Year is called the Small Year. Families start to sweep their houses and buy all the food for the feast of the New Year’s Eve. Sweeping the rooms symbolizes getting rid of bad luck. Preparing more food than really needed means that the family will have extra wealth than was spent, so the family will be richer and wealthier every year.

Just before the New Year’s Eve, people will take food and wine to their ancestors’ graves and burn ghost money to remember their ancestors. On the morning of the New Year’s Eve, people will paste spring couplets on the gateposts and hang red lanterns for good blessings. In the evening, before the feast, people like to set off firecrackers to expel all evils.

The New Year’s Eve feast is extremely important for a family, so some specific foods must be served, such as fish whose pronunciation is the same as the word “more” in Mandarin, so it stands for good fortune. The word chicken is pronounced the same as “good luck” in Mandarin, and dumplings, not only represent the reunion of the whole family, but also mean wealth because they have the same shape as a gold ingot.

Starting from the first day of the New Year in the Lunar Calendar, people will visit other families. They will give red envelopes containing money to other family’s children, which symbolizes best wishes. The fifteenth day of the first month of the New Year is the Lantern Festival, and traditionally people see it as the end of the Lunar New Year celebration. In the evening, people will light lots of candles or small fires around their family homes so that their ancestors may be peaceful in heaven. The Lantern Festival is also called Yuanxiao Festival because people usually eat Yuanxiao, which is a sweet dumpling made with sticky rice flour filled with sweet stuffing, representing that life in the New Year will be full of sweetness and family gatherings.