Chinese New Year, the Spring Festival
The Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival, is the most important festival on the Chinese calendar. The festivities traditionally begin on the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar and end with the Lantern Festival celebrated on the 15th day of the New Year.
The Chinese festival year follows a lunar calendar and consists of twelve moons; each moon lasts about 29 1/2 days. The Chinese calendar follows a 12-year cycle and each year relates to an animal in the Chinese zodiac. Year 4708, the year beginning February 3, 2011, is the Year of the Rabbit.
Festivities and Traditions
For the Chinese, the New Year is a time of great renewal. They devote the last few days of the old year to intense preparation. They clean their homes in a belief that, along with the dirt and debris around their homes, they can sweep away the mistakes and misfortunes of the past. They hang protective ornaments in their homes to welcome the good fortunes that the New Year brings.
The Chinese New Year is also a period of reunion. Scores of migrants return home to share the festivities with their families. The Chinese celebrate by partaking in divinatory readings at temples, sharing gifts, and bonding over elaborate family dinner parties. Children receive “lucky money” in red envelopes as part of the New Year’s gift-giving.
Outside of the Far East, ethnic Chinese celebrate the New Year in Chinatowns around the world with community parades and extravaganzas featuring fireworks, lion and dragon dance-shows, acrobatics, lanterns, and illuminated floats.
Chinese Proverbs
Patience is power; with time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown.
—Chinese Proverb
Gold cannot be pure, and people cannot be perfect.
—Chinese Proverb
If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.
—Chinese Proverb
Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very, very long time.
—Chinese Proverb
Slander cannot destroy the man … when the flood recedes, the rock is there.
—Chinese Proverb
I dreamed a thousand new paths… I woke and walked my old one.
—Chinese Proverb
If you must play, decide upon three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.
—Chinese Proverb
What you cannot avoid, welcome.
—Chinese Proverb
Man fools himself. He prays for a long life, and he fears an old age.
—Chinese Proverb
Never try to catch two frogs with one hand.
—Chinese Proverb
Flowers leave their fragrance on the hand that bestows them.
—Chinese Proverb
If you want your dinner, don’t offend the cook.
—Chinese Proverb
Talk doesn’t cook rice.
—Chinese Proverb
A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion.
—Chinese Proverb
Not the fastest horse can catch a word spoken in anger.
—Chinese Proverb
Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men.
—Chinese Proverb
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. But the second best time is today.
—Chinese Proverb