Several major cities claim to boast the biggest New Year’s party outside of Asia – including London, Sydney and San Francisco – but no one knows for sure which claim is true. In the latter, the festivities usually involve a street party over which a member of the royal family presides.Ĭhinese New Year is now a global event, with parties scheduled in cities all around the world. It is also a public holiday in countries where much of the population is of Chinese descent, like the Philippines and Thailand. Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore all enjoy huge celebrations featuring street parties, parades and dance competitions. Many South-East Asian countries see the Lunar New Year as the most important festive date on the calendar. Picture: Justin Tallis/ AFP How is it celebrated elsewhere? London’s Chinese New Year party is a huge event. Those in Hong Kong and other Cantonese-speaking parts of the world tend to go with ‘gong hei fat choy’ which translates to ‘congratulations on the fortune’. In Chinese, the common greeting at New Year is ‘xin nian kuai le’ which means ‘Happy New Year’. In fact, an industry has been created as actors are hired to pose as boyfriends and girlfriends for embarrassed singles over the holiday season. Thanks to the pressure, many younger people feel to impress their parents and grandparents. This has created an odd phenomenon known as ‘snatching red pockets’ in which people send one into a group chat and watch their friends scrap it out. In more recent times, it has become fashionable to give digital red envelopes instead of physical ones. They can also be given between employers and employees, as well as between friends. As people flock home to spend the holiday with their relatives, the largest human migration of the year takes place – known as ‘chunyun’ or ‘spring migration’.Ĭhildren are given red envelopes filled with money from many of their older relatives in a gesture which is also designed to transfer good fortune between them. There are all kinds of taboos which must be avoided to prevent bad fortune, such as showering on New Year’s day or using words like ‘illness’ and ‘death’.Ībove all else, though, New Year is a time to be spent with family. The New Year is also seen as a time for honouring your gods and ancestors in the hope of bringing good fortune for the year to come. The colour red was also an important tool in defeating the monster, hence why everything will be decorated red during the New Year period. The tradition comes from a folk tale about a monster named Nian who was scared away using firecrackers. However, over 500 cities in China have actually now either restricted or outright banned fireworks due to safety concerns and air pollution, but they remain an immensely popular part of the New Year’s celebrations. The traditional Chinese calendar is still often used to help pick the dates for weddings, funerals and the like, with certain days believed to be more auspicious than others.įireworks are a huge part of Chinese New Year celebrations, with more rockets set off on that night than on any other night of the year. This places the New Year as beginning on the day of the first new moon that falls between 21 January and 20 February. The traditional Chinese calendar is based on a mixture of lunar and solar phenomenon – days still begin and end at midnight but months begin on the day of the full moon and years begin on the second new moon after the winter solstice. The Gregorian calendar is now almost ubiquitous across the globe, although a few nations (like Ethiopia, Nepal and Iran) still retain their own calendars instead. This is in spite of the fact that the Gregorian calendar is now used in day to day life in China, as it is in most of the world. In China, the celebrations are usually termed the ‘Spring Festival’.Ĭhinese New Year differs from the ‘standard’ western New Year’s Day because it is based on the traditional Chinese calendar rather than the Gregorian one. This is because the traditional Chinese calendar which it is based on is measured by the position of the Moon, rather than by the Earth’s revolution around the Sun as it is in the Gregorian calendar.
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