The Chinese New Year is probably the largest and most celebrated of all of the New Year’s celebrations. While there are certainly more people that celebrate the New Year according to the Gregorian Calendar, the Chinese New Year is a two-week long (actually fifteen day) festival of lights, fireworks and entertainment in almost every imaginable form. If you are looking for the ultimate New Year’s Celebration, you may want to wait a month or so extra and enjoy the Chinese New Year celebrations and festivities.
The Chinese New Year celebration starts at the beginning of the Lunar New Year in early Spring, which is why Chinese New Years is also occasionally known as the Spring Festival. This generally occurs sometime in the “traditional” month of February and the celebration itself lasts for a full, two-week period during which there is never any shortage of food, fireworks or celebration. In fact, if you can make it to Mainland China, Taiwan or even to Hong Kong or Singapore for the Chinese New Year Celebration, you are very likely going to encounter one of the wildest celebrations, the largest displays of fireworks and enough food to keep you filled with memories for a lifetime.
It may be of interest to note that during the Chinese New Year Celebration, more people travel to Mainland China than the total indigenous population. While that in itself should be pretty impressive and indicative of just how popular the holiday is, when you consider that there are well over one and a quarter Billion Chinese people, that figure becomes downright amazing in stature and volume. While many of these travelers are tourists to the Chinese Mainland, many of them are Chinese foreign workers who return for reunions and time well-spent with family members and warding off any misfortunes for the coming year.
There are different traditions and celebrations for all fifteen days of the Chinese New Year Celebration based on their differing traditions and cultures within Mainland China and the particular ethnic group of the people doing the celebrating. While the celebrations may differ slightly, there are some traditions that hold true throughout the celebration no matter what part of China you are in. Furthermore, there are certain taboos that you should be aware of if you are actually participating in the traditional celebrations rather than just being there for the amazing food and festivities.
If you are giving gifts in China it is never good to give anyone any timepiece as a gift. It is also wise to avoid giving out anything with feathers as a gift as well. If you are stuffing those little red envelopes with cash as is the local tradition, you should never include an odd amount but only even numbers. The odd (dollar) amounts of cash are reserved for funerals and you would certainly not want to wish someone a happy new year by reminding them of something so otherwise somber and dreary as a funeral. Never give gifts (or anything else for that matter) in sets of four and preferably avoid the number four and even fourteen altogether if possible. If you are just looking for the ultimate New Year Celebration, the Chinese New Year really is pretty difficult to beat.
Post Credits
- Chinese New Year Celebration by 28481088@N00 & Chinese New Year by Manc
