春节介绍-英文版

Chinese New Year
Spring Festival is the Chinese New Year. It starts on the 1st and ends on the 15th of lunar January. Spring Festival celebrates the coming of spring. Several days before the New Year, every family prepares rich food, buys new clothes, and cleans the house. Many families buy or write Spring Festival couplets and put them on the door. People believe that everything must be new and clean for the Spring Festival celebration so that the New Year will bring happiness and good luck. In China, red represents luck.

Origin of the Spring Festival
The lunar calendar new year origin, has the basis, also is rich and picks the varied fable to be possible to trace to several millenniums before. Most is famous is "the year beast" fable. "The year beast" is a cruel terrible wild animal, ancient times the person believed "year beast" when lunar New Year's Eve night can come out eats the person. The fable "the year beast" extremely fears red, the flame and quarrels the mixed sound, the people on paste the red paper in the gate, and selects the torch all night, is setting off the artillery candle, avoids "the year beast". To second day early morning, "has congratulated" the sound to the ear, in the air does not fill the air is defeating "the year beast" the victory and the rebirth joy.

Sweeping the dust
“Dust” is homophonic with “chen” in Chinese, which means old and past. In this way, “sweeping the dust” before the Spring Festival means a thorough cleaning of houses to sweep away bad luck in the past year. This custom shows a good wish of putting away old things to welcome a new life. In a word, just before the Spring Festival comes, every household will give a thorough cleaning to bid farewell to the old year and usher in the new.

Pasting Spring Couplets
On the eve of the Spring Festival, every household will paste on doors a spring couplet written on the red paper to give a happy and prosperous atmosphere of the Festival.

Chinese New Year’s Eve Dinner
In New Year’s Eve, the most important festival, Chinese family often get together to spend the whole night. They often have the New Year’s dinner together, and celebrate the New Year in their own way.
The New Year’s dinner is very tasteful and delicious, for it not only a dinner but also a family meeting. Each family member sits around the table and talks while eating. It stands for the harmony and unity of a family. Since the dinner is very important, it takes too much time and effort to prepare it. For New Y ear’s dinner, the food is extremely exquisite and traditional. First, Jiaozi is necessary. Jiaozi, also called dumpling.