Cultural Traditions: Chinese New Year

 Traditions of Chinese New Year: Celebration of Family and Culture

Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, is a very well known tradition and celebration in Chinese culture. This tradition is the beginning of the lunar calendar, the lunar calendar falls between late January to mid- February. This tradition emphasizes prosperity, themes of renewal and family unity. 

What is Chinese New Year?

Chinese New year is widely recognized all around the world as being the most significant cultural celebration in the world. People view it as a time of renewal and emphasizing things like family values and good fortune. From the History Channel, the festival has been celebrated for a couple thousand years and evolved from ancient sacrificial rituals into global phenomenons. This tradition is deeply personal to those who celebrate it, it has a special meaning to each individual person. People express their excitement about reuniting with family members, as many people travel far distances to be home for the holiday .One blogger from ' China Highlights' says that "the reunion dinner is the most anticipated event of the year" which symbolizes unity and love. Not only is this celebrated in China, but it's celebrated worldwide, especially in big cities like London, New York and Sydney. National Geographic wrote an article about how these global celebrations highlight Chinese culture and cultural appreciation. Chinese New Year blends traditions with modern celebrations and brings people together across countries and generations. 

 

By storytelling and sharing personal knowledge about celebrating Chinese New Year, including personal interviews or quotes of people that celebrate the holiday, can really make the blog more personal and informational. Providing informative and educational content, like explaining the historical evolution of the holiday, explaining the symbolism and highlighting how the Chinese New Year is celebrated worldwide can also fill the blog with good information. The use of multimedia elements such as images, interactive sites, videos or infographics can also show the viewer a good idea of how and what Chinese New Year looks like and is celebrated. Interactive engagement can allow the reader to fully comprehend what they're reading, like asking readers questions within the blog, providing a comment section or even a small knowledge quiz! Using credible sources and hyperlinks linked to explaining the traditions, history and experiences of the Chinese New Year can provide the reader with even more information. 

There are a lot of other blogs that touch on the topic of celebrating Chinese New Year and what it's really all about. These blogs provide so much information and some of them are even interactive which is a great way to keep people interested. The blogs I found contain guides about it, they touch on the topics of the history (extensively), the symbolism and who celebrates. I have even learned from some of these blogs and it's given me a good idea on what to publish on my own. They provide detailed lists of when it starts, what to eat, what to wear and who you celebrate with! These blogs make it simple and easy to read and it gets to the point. 

Origin:

Chinese New Year is believed to have originated over 3,000 years ago, during the Shang Dynasty*, its also rooted in ancient religious and agricultural traditions. The Gregorian calendar, which is the calendar used by most of the world today, is not followed by this tradition. Chinese New Year follows the lunar calendar, which falls between January 21 and February 20. This special holiday is a time for families to get together and have a reunion. They gather, share meals and honor their ancestors, they have this special reunion dinner on New Years Eve, and its considered to be the most important meal of the year. The meaning and traditions of the Chinese New Year is very important to understand in their culture. Chinese New Year is celebrated by many Asian cultures but there are also different celebrations within each country, like the Vietnamese celebrate Tet, Koreans celebrate Seollal and Indonesia celebrates with dragons and puppets, more similar to Chinese New Year.

* The Shang dynasty , also known as the Yin dynasty was the very first Chinese dynasty. It made great contributions in the development of the Chinese civilization, it was also founded sometime around 1600 BCE. The dynasty was a monarchy by a series of kings, roughly about 30, over the time of 600 years!

Symbolism:

The symbolism and festivities are also very important and each of the events have a special meaning. You will notice red envelopes ( Hongbao) and this is where children are given envelopes by their elders filled with money, it symbolizes good fortune and it wards off evil spirits. The color red is also very symbolic with this tradition, it symbolizes joy, virtue and sincerity. You will see the color red being the most prominent color as well, you will see items that are painted red, red fireworks and decorative objects in red. Chinese mythology also has a belief about the color red, that is scares away the beast Nian, which is something that has terrorized many ancient chinesevillages and the locals found the monster to be afraid the red color. Fireworks and firecrackers are also a big part of celebrating Chinese New Year, fireworks were actually invented in China! Within the new year celebration, the fireworks have a symbolic function, used to scare off evil spirits, tying along with the red envelopes which also wards off evil spirits. The most popular firecrackers that are used are the ones connected by a single string that create a chain reaction, sometimes the results can be deafening but they want to scare off the evil spirits.

What drew me to Chinese New Year?

Something that drew me to wanting to write about Chinese New Year, is the time of year that this assignment came, while being assigned Chinese New Year was happening, as it happens between January 20- February 21. Also i'm not very familiar with the tradition or the celebrations so I wanted something that I could learn about, that was also interesting to me. I haven't really heard people talk about Chinese New Year either, so I wanted to write about it to spread more information about the celebration. However, I have seen countless social media posts about the tradition, I have seen how they celebrate, what they eat and who's involved. It's something that I found interesting to see and would think others might like to see and learn about it as well, so you could say I was kind of inspired!

 

I have also learned a lot from doing this assignment, I conducted a lot of research of the Chinese New Year. I talked a little about the Shang dynasty, which I learned about in school, so exploring that more and adding a bit more detail into this blog was something I think adds a little bit of history. I didn't know all of the background, like how it was a monarchy, there were kings and where it all started in China, that was interesting to learn about. I also learned what most of the symbols mean when they celebrate Chinese new year, like the envelopes, fireworks and even the fish. I learned about their zodiac, which is associated with the lunar calendar, they go based off of animals which are: Ox, Rat, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Pig, Dog, Rooster and Monkey. Each of these have a meaning, like Ox symbolizes generosity, patience and hardworking, a Tiger symbolizes bravery, and acceptance and a Dragon symbolizes good fortune, power and strength! Each animal is said to have its own personality traits, the Chinese zodiac signs also begin at the start of the Chinese New Year, and is done at the end, so January to February. I would like to explore why the specific celebrations take place and just know more about them, since everything seems to have a deeper meaning than what it shows on the outside.

Most fascinating aspect:

There are many celebrations within the Chinese New Year that interest me but I think the one that grabs my attention the most is that the country goes on something called " red alert". Since red is the central color of the celebration, red lanterns are hung, red paper cutouts cover the walls, and the gifts of money are given in red envelopes. People also wear red during the celebration, however, I found out by research that some thinks its too much and wear silver or gold instead! I think its really interesting how they associate red with being good fortune and warding off evil spirits, it enhances the meaning of the color, and I think its important to know why red is the central color. I think its also interesting how the sea monster, Nian, highly influenced the importance of red. People have said that the monster would come ashore during the Lunar New Years eve and create chaos, the only thing that would scare it away was the color red, loud noises and fire, which makes sense for half of their celebrations or why they may celebrate that way. I think learning about Chinese New Year has been very informational and i'm glad I can share what I have learned!