Festivities During Chinese Spring Festival
By admin on 2014-12-16

Days before Spring Festival

Several days before Spring Festival, Chinese families give their home a thorough cleaning. It is believed the cleaning sweeps away bad luck of the preceding year and make way for good luck. Brooms and dust pans are put away on the first day so that luck cannot be swept away. Homes are often decorated with paper-cuts of Chinese auspicious phrases and couplets. Purchasing new clothing, shoes and receiving a hair-cut also symbolize a fresh start.

On the eve of Spring Festival, every family will have reunion dinner. Special dishes are displayed; fish is included as the Chinese phrase "may there be surpluses every year. After dinner, it is time for the whole family to sit up for the night, while having fun playing cards or board games or watching TV programs like CCTV New Year's Gala or burning fireworks. Every light is supposed to be kept on the whole night.

People in northern China eat jiaozi, or dumplings shaped like gold ingots, symbolizing the good wishes for wealth. Southerners eat niangao, or New Year cake made of glutinous rice flour, which is a homonym for "higher each year", symbolizing progress and promotion at work and improvement in life year by year.

Spring Festival

Very early on Spring Festival, children greet their parents and receive their presents in terms of cash wrapped up in red paper packages. Members of the family who are married also give red packets containing cash to junior members of the family, mostly children and teenagers.It is a time when families visit the oldest and most senior members of their extended family, usually their parents, grandparents or great-grandparents.

Another activities is for the whole familiy to show respect to the deceased in graveyard.

Second day of Spring Festival

Married daughters, together with their husbands and children, will go back to their parents' house for the reunion dinners, to show their respect and deep affection. Bringing along with them are the presents. After lunch or dinner the married daughters will return home.

Fifth day of Spring Festival

People stay home to welcome the God of Wealth by exploding firecrackers or burning joss sticks. On the occasion, incense is burned and sacrifices are offered. The image of the God is put up in all households. The God of Wealth, called Marshal Zhao, is believed to bring people a big fortune. Worshipped by the people from all walks of life in China, the God of Wealth has a great influence and is the god for fortune-seeking people to venerate and to make sacrifices to.