Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year

     The biggest holiday, with dragons, fireworks, symbolic clothing, flowers, lanterns, and celebration is China's most important and significant day of the year, which is also known as the Spring Festival. The first day of the New Year falls on the new moon between 21 January and 20 February. Chinese New Year celebrations traditionally run from Chinese New Year's Eve, the last day of the last month of the Chinese calendar, to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month, making the festival the longest in the Chinese calendar.

     Before the celebration, people will normally completely clean the house and display traditional New Year decorations. This festivity is the time for family reunion, which is the most important part of the Chinese New Year celebration. People will normally visit relatives and friends, do some activities, such as going shopping, watching traditional Chinese shows, launching fireworks, and planing for the coming year. The celebration will sometimes be highlighted with a religious ceremony given in honor of heaven, earth, the family ancestors and other gods. In modern China, working professionals will normally have 7 days of holiday including the weekend to celebrate. After the family reunion, some modern Chinese families may take the chance to visit tourist destinations, such as temple fairs in Beijing, Guangzhou — Flower Fairs and Lion Dance Performances, and Hong Kong.

     For the first day, Chinese people in some place will stay at home, and in other places,especially younger people will visit and greet older relatives and friends to meet and have dinner together, in the other hands, it is a joyous day that children will receive red packets containing money from their parents and their elders.On the second day, Some people will host a religious ceremony to honor the gods, married females will visit their parents. In addition, they will join the ceremony to honor the ancestors on the third day. And for the fifteenth day, This is the Yuan Xiao festival, which is called The Lantern festival or the end of the New Year celebrations.

During the Festival, people will go out at night to temples carrying paper lanterns and solve riddles on it, then the lantern will fly up to the sky and people will make a wish. They believe that the wish will be come true.

     Like in Thailand, Chinese New Year is celebrated in many provinces, especially in those areas with large populations of Chinese, such as Bangkok, where the city's Chinatown area is usually the scene of a large block party.