Chinese New Year is a time for families to be together. Wherever they are, people come home to celebrate the festival with their families. The New Year's Eve dinner is called "reunion dinner", and is believed to be the most important meal of the year.
Chinese New Year is celebrated for sixteen days (from New Year's Eve to the Lantern Festival). The preparations start seven days before the New Year's Eve. Many activities for this period are traditional customs, but some are quite new... Here is a daily guide to the celebrations in 2017.
Pre-Chinese New Year Preparations (January 20–26, 2017)
Laba Festival
Some Chinese start to celebrate and prepare for New Year as early as month 12 day 8 of the lunar calendar. This is a festival called Laba ( 腊八 Làbā /laa-baa/ '12th lunar month' + '8'). It's January 5 in 2017.
Cleaning the House
People clean their houses before Chinese New Year.
From the 23rd of the 12th lunar month (January 20, 2017), Chinese people carry out a thorough cleaning of their houses. The cleaning is called "sweeping the dust", and represents a wish to put away old things, bid farewell to the old year, and welcome the New Year.
New Year Shopping
People buy New Year food and snacks, New Year decorations, and clothes for New Year before New Year’s Eve. Chinese New Year, like Christmas in China, is a shopping boom time.
Chinese people may be thrifty most of the time, but they seem quite generous in their spending during their traditional festivals. For example, they buy everyone new clothes for the festival, whether they need them or not. There are New Year street markets on the days before the festival.
New Year's Eve Activities (January 27, 2017)
Putting up spring couplets
Putting Up New Year Decorations
Although some people decorate their houses several days before the festival, most people do it on New Year's Eve. Houses are decorated with red lanterns, red couplets, New Year paintings, and red lanterns. 2017 is a year of the Rooster, so monkey images will appear on decoratons. People may decorate their houses using some or all of the following things...
Affixing Door God Images
Pasting a door god image on the door is an important custom among Chinese people during Spring Festival. In the beginning door gods were made of peach wood carved into the figure of a man, hanging by the door. Later people pasted printed images on doors.
People paste door gods on doors as a prayer for blessings, longevity, health, and peace. Two door gods on double doors are thought to keep evil spirits from entering. The door gods symbolize righteousness and power in China, therefore Chinese door gods are always scowling, holding various weapons, and ready to fight with evil spirits.
Putting Up Spring Couplets
Spring couplets or New Year couplets (春联: Chūnlián /chwn-lyen/) are paired phrases, typically of seven Chinese characters each, written on red paper in black ink, and pasted one each side of a door frame.
Sometimes a phrase of four or five characters is affixed to the top of the door frame as well. New Year couplets are filled with best wishes. Some people write the couplets themselves, but most people buy them (ready printed) from the market. Pasting spring couplets is thought to keep evil away.
Putting Up New Year Paintings
It is a custom to paste paper cutouts on windows during the Chinese New Year.
New Year paintings carrying best wishes are put up to decorate houses, creating a happy and prosperous Spring Festival atmosphere
The subjects of New Year paintings are often flowers and birds, plump boys and Guanyin (the Goddess of Mercy... and fertility), golden roosters, oxen, ripe fruit and treasure, or other legends and historical stories, showing desires for bountiful harvests and a happy life.
"The Four Homelands of the New Year Painting" are New-Year-Painting Village in Mianzhu, Sichuan Province; Taohuawu in Suzhou, Yangliuqing in Tianjin, and Weifang in Shandong.
Putting Up Paper Cutouts
In the past people pasted paper cutouts on windows facing south and north before the Spring Festival. Paper cutouts are still popular with northerners, but people in the south only paste paper cutouts on wedding days.
The subjects and themes of paper cutouts are rich. As the majority of buyers are peasants many are about rural life: farming, weaving, fishing, tending sheep, feeding pigs, raising chickens, etc. Paper cutouts sometimes depict myths, legends, and Chinese operas. Also flowers, birds, and Chinese Zodiac creatures are popular paper cutout designs.
Paper cutouts are usually diamond-shaped in lucky red, with beautiful and exaggerated patterns. They express hopes of a merry and prosperous life, in line with the Spring Festival theme.
