This year, Chinese New Year falls on January 22nd. This is a very important day in the Chinese calendar, which differs from the American even in its chronology – not 2023, but 4720 will come in China.

Since ancient times, in Chinese culture, the New Year

Symbolises the beginning of spring and is called “Chun Jie”, which means “Spring Festival”. Interestingly, the Chinese New Year is celebrated for two weeks and during this time most Chinese take holidays.

Chinese New Year Traditions

According to the legend of ancient China, once upon a time there lived a large and ferocious monster Nian, who hid in the depths of the sea for a year, and on New Year’s Eve came out of the water and devoured everything in its path. People were afraid of him, so every time whole families hid in the mountains from a terrible beast.

Later it turned out that Nian is afraid of the color red. One old beggar, who decided to save people from the monster, decorated the door of his house with red paint, dressed himself in bright red clothes, took lanterns and bamboo firecrackers with him and made such an incredible noise that he frightened the monster and the monster never returned.

Since then, the Chinese have preserved the tradition of celebrating the New Year loudly and cheerfully, and the obligatory attribute of this holiday is fire, lanterns and red colour. On New Year’s Eve, people stick red paired inscriptions on the doors of their houses, fire crackers, and lights are lit in the houses. All this action is called “shou sui” (to protect the year). Every family also carefully cleans their house, because in this way people try to free their space and thoughts from everything unnecessary and get rid of failures.

During the holiday, the Chinese people go to visit each other with gifts. They have an interesting tradition, when coming to visit on New Year’s Eve, you need to bring two tangerines. The fact is that the phrase “a pair of tangerines” in Chinese sounds almost the same as the word “gold”. And it turns out that by giving tangerines to each other, you wish abundance for the whole year.

Since the celebration of the Chinese New Year is closely intertwined with religion. It is believed that before the New Year, the family deity Jiaowang reports to the heavenly emperor on the state of each family. Therefore, religious people, in order to appease this deity and so that it conveys only good information, various delicacies are taught in front of the Jiaowang figurine.

At dinner, the whole family gathers at the festive table, which is “bursting” with a variety of dishes. The main dish among them are jiaozi dumplings, fish dishes and sweets.

It is customary to celebrate the holiday in red clothes, since in the East red colour symbolizes good luck and prosperity. And the tradition of launching red lanterns into the sky was created not for beauty, but to scare away evil spirits who want to settle in every house in the New Year.

Also during the celebration of the Chinese New Year, many festivals are held where you can see a variety of dances and fireworks, hear songs and see theatrical performances from the times of the Chinese Empire.