Chinese New Year Facts
An important holiday in East Asia, the Chinese New Year or Spring Festival begins on the first day of the first lunar month in the Chinese calendar and ends on the 15th. Read on to learn about some interesting facts associated with this wonderful festival and have a better idea about the occasion.
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The Chinese New Year festivities is sometimes called the Lunar New Year, especially by people outside China.
The Chinese people age a year together. Tradition holds that on the seventh day of the new year, all people in China become a year older.
On the fifteenth and final day of the Chinese New Year celebrations, the Chinese Lantern Festival is observed. Almost all members of Chinese families walk the streets with lanterns, marking the end of festivities and gorge on traditional dishes.
The "tsujiura senbei" is a kind of fortune cookie associated with New Year festivities at Shinto Shrines.
Its unique name comes from the fact that it contains a tsujiura (a writing that tells one's fortunes) inside a senbei (Japanese crackers). This Japanese food is centuries old.
During the Chinese New Year Festival only married couples give "Ang Pow"s, red envelopes containing money to buy holiday treats, to their kids or relatives of their younger generations instead of giving presents. Following a popular superstition, the money in the red packets always total upto an even numbered amount and never an odd numbered one because the latter is usually associated with funeral money. Also, the money should never add up to anything with the number 4 in it, because 4 in Chinese sounds like the word ‘death’.
Every year, China Central Television (CCTV) holds a special on Lunar New Year's Eve, featuring dances, songs, and short comedies.
During the Xia Dynasty, the Chinese New Year was traditionally said to have begun with month 1. In 221 BC, the first Emperor of China Qin Shi Huang changed the beginning of the year to month 10. But in 104 BC, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty again established month 1 as the beginning of the year.
In ancient China, bamboo stems filled with gunpowder were burnt to create small explosions in the belief that the loud sound drove away evil spirits. The burning of firecrackers in modern-day China still maintains this age-old custom.
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