Culture Village

In our village, all different celebrations and cultural events occur throughout the year. It's time to celebrate CHINESE NEW YEAR. We hope you will enjoy a glimpse of this exotic scene. Before the celebration, we have a question for you: What is the Chinese New Year color?

Celebrate Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year starts with the New Moon on the first day of the new year based on the Chinese calendar and ends on the full moon 15 days later. The 15th day of the new year is called the Lantern Festival, which is celebrated at night with lantern displays and children carrying lanterns in a parade. Chinese New Year is a time when families and friends get together to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new. Chinese New Year is called " Spring Festival" (" Chun Jie" or "Nian" in Chinese) in China. According to the Chinese calendar, spring coincides with the new year.

The Chinese Calendar follows the lunar cycle, so Chinese New Year's day falls on a different date every year in the Western calendar. January 26th 2009 marks the start of the Year of the Ox.

What Do Chinese People do to Celebrate Spring Festival?

House Cleaning: From December 23rd in the Chinese calendar, people begin to clean their houses. This spring cleaning will bring a fresh start of the new year.

Decorating: People hang red lanterns in front of their house. Office buildings and stores are also decorated with red lanterns. Bright red posters with black or golden Chinese calligraphy are placed on the doors of peoples' homes. They carry the New Year's messages of prosperity, health and good luck. The color for Chinese New Year is RED.

Lighting Firecrackers: Right at 12 o'clock midnight of New Year's Eve, cities and towns are lit up with the glitter from fireworks, and the sound can be deafening. Kids usually stay up just for this joyful moment, even though they plug their ears (Now in some big cities, firecrackers are forbidden out of concern for safety).

New Year's Feast: New Year is the traditional time for family reunions, and the New Year's Eve feast is the focal point. Dumplings are the traditional major dish for the feast. They are prepared in advance, and when the fire-crackers go off, that signals the dumplings need to be dumped in pots.

Granting Red Envelops: This is one of kids' favorite things in Spring Festival. Parents and grandparents first put money in small, specially made red envelopes, then place the envelops wpe1.jpg (28061 bytes) under their kids' pillows after kids fall asleep. The money is used to "pay off" monsters so their children can have a peaceful and happy new year to grow ( of course, getting money makes the kids happy as well).

New Year's parade: Parades are going on continuously from New Year's Day through the 15th (Lantern Day), streets are filled with marching bands, performers on stilts, floats and especially troupes carrying out traditional lion and dragon dances in company with drums and gongs. Dragons symbolize good luck and lions represent strength of life.