Diversity Affairs banner    

Diversity Affairs Feature

Chinese New Year Festival

Hank Zou
Hank Zou, graduate student, stands next to a dragon symbolizing the Spring Festival in the Regency Palace Seafood Restaurant in Luoyang City, China.

The Chinese spring festival is coming; in fact, the festival is the biggest and more ceremonious festival in China, just like Christmas in the west countries. We all like it, no matter where you are, you may expect to go home to reunite with your family. I think maybe it is a kind of complex mood of our Chinese people. The dates for this annual celebration are determined by the lunar calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar, so the timing of the holiday varies from late January to early February. Chinese New Year is not only celebrated in China but in some other Asian countries like Singapore, Indonesia and Korea where people also celebrate Spring Festival.

Before the New Year comes, the people completely clean the indoors and outdoors of their homes as well as their clothes. The celebration begins right on the Eve of the Festival, when the whole family comes and has a dinner together. This meal, always with dumplings, can be quite a sumptuous one, during which the families exchange good wishes for the oncoming year. On that night traditionally, people also stick couplets expressing good wishes around the doorframe and stay up all night. People tend to get up early the next day and visit neighbor and relatives. The grown-ups may give some fortune money to the children, which is often packed in red and symbolizes good luck. The celebration of Spring Festival may commonly last for 7 days, and is highlighted as one of the symbols of traditional Chinese culture.

Well, I have already made plans on how to spend my spring festival holidays of 2007. Maybe it’s not very perfect because I can not go back to China, but I will try my best to spend the festival with my friends, so I am too impatient to wait and wish the spring festival of 2007 will come as quickly as possible.