d by every family or purchasing pork was the most main activity; as a result, they could reserve the pork for the festival. Although modern people can eat meat in daily life, people still like to buy meat on this day to keep to the tradition.
|Shopping the Festival |
Dec. 27th (Feb. 1, 2019)
Shopping is the most important activity on this day. People will purchase fireworks, couplets, toys and so on. They also buy new clothes for the next year. In the folk custom, people will also have baths and wash all the clothes in the hope, of removing the bad luck from the previous year.
Dec. 28th (Feb. 2, 2019)
Making steamed breads and pasting the paper-cuts
are done on this day. People will prepare the food for all the days from the starting of Chinese New Year (Jan. 1 according to lunar calendar) to Lantern Festival (Jan. 15), for in old times, nothing could be bought during that period. Also on this day, people will decorate the rooms by pasting paper-cuts on the windows.
Although now the supermarkets or shopping centers are still open and people can easily purchase anything during the holiday, it is still a habit for people to prepare various kinds of food before the festival, especially in the rural areas.
Dec. 29th (Feb. 3, 2019)
On this day, people will worship ancestors at their tombs.
Dec. 30th (Feb. 4, 2019 - New Year’s Eve)
|Spring Festival Couplets |
This is the most important and cheerful day. People will paste the Spring Festival Couplets, Gods of Gates and Chinese New Year pictures. Even though, modern people seldom do these things in time order as ancient people did, they still keep the custom of pasting the couplets. When all couplets are pasted, the festive atmosphere will be filled in every corner in China.
Reunion Dinner, Chinese New Year TV gala and staying up all night on its Eve are also traditional customs. Similar to the Christmas Dinner in western countries, the Reunion Dinner has significant meaning to Chinese people, because it is the time that all family members reunite together. With the reunion dinner, the whole family welcomes a lunar new year happily. The most important food in this dinner is the dumpling, which is very popular in the northern part of the country. Niangao and rice dumplings are eaten by people in southern part of the country. Besides, various Chinese New Year foods are served on that night such as fish, spring rolls and so on.
After the dinner, it is the happiest time for the younger generations, because they can get red envelopes from the older generations. At midnight, many places will strike bells to pray for the next smooth year, and people will set off fireworks.
Jan. 1st of Chinese New Year (Feb. 5, 2019)
Setting off firecrackers to chase off bad spirits is the first thing to do after people get up on the first day. After the firecrackers, it is time for the first meal of the year, which is as important as the reunion dinner for most Chinese people. Most people choose to eat dumplings, in hope of making fortune in the future, because the shape of the dumpling is similar to the gold ingots used as currency in ancient time. People in Fujian prefer to eat noodles, because the noodle is the symbol of longevity in local culture.
The first day is also a time to pay a New Year’s visit as well as send blessing to the senior members of extended families and other relatives. Now the methods of sending blessing are changing and many modern methods are used such as text messages and e-mails, as well as phone calls.
Jan. 2nd (Feb. 6, 2019)
People will worship the God of Wealth on this day. It is also the time for married daughters to visit their birth parents and relatives, because in daily life in ancient China they could not go back to their birth families. Even though daughters now can go to visit their birth parents at any time, this custom remains.
Jan. 3rd (Feb. 7, 2019)
This day is also called Goat Day, on which people cannot kill the sheep or goats. In southern China, people think quarrels can easily happen, so they do not visit each other on this day.
Jan. 5th (Feb. 9, 2019)
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