new year celebration

The Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, is the most important traditional festival in China and is celebrated for sixteen days. There are many customs relating to food, decorations, greetings, and gifts. Here is a daily guide to the celebrations in 2015.

Pre-Chinese New Year Preparations

Cleaning the House
From the 23rd of the 12th lunar month, 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.

Chinese don’t clean the house the first two days of the New Year. To do so is believed to sweep away good luck.

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.  

Putting Up New Year Decorations
Although some people decorate their houses several days before the festival, most people do it at New Year’s Eve. Houses are decorated with red lanterns, red couplets, New Year paintings, and red lanterns. 2015 is the year of the goat, so goat images will appear.

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.

People may decorate their houses using some of the following things, but not all of them.

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 from the market. Pasting spring couplets is thought to keep evil away.

Putting Up New Year’s Paintings

New Year paintings are put up to decorate houses, carrying best wishes, and creating a happy and prosperous atmosphere at the Spring Festival. 

The subjects of New Year paintings are often flowers and birds, plump boys (with 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 in 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.

Enjoying a Reunion Dinner

The New Year's Eve Feast is a "must do" dinner with all the family members getting together. Many people try very hard to make this family event. This imperative contributes to a huge travel rush throughout the country.

People from north and south China have different sayings about the food;they eat on this special day. In northern China a traditional dish for the feast is jiaozi (dumplings). They are shaped like a crescent or half moon. Southern Chinese eat niangao (a cake made of glutinous rice flour) on this special day because niangao sounds like the words for the phrase "higher every year".

Read more on Chinese New Year Food.

Watching CCTV's New Year Gala
It is a custom for the Chinese people to watch the CCTV New Year Gala while having their dinner. The Gala starts at 8pm and ends at 12:00 when the New Year arrives. Programs feature traditional Chinese folk songs and performances. China's best singers, musical groups, and acrobats appear on the show each year.

Giving Red Envelopes (Lucky Money) to Kids

Parents give their children red envelopes in the evening, with good wishes for their kids growing healthily in the coming year. Red envelopes always have money in. Money put in red envelops is believed to bring good luck, as red is a luck color, so it is called lucky money.


The red envelops are usually given after the reunion dinner.

Staying Up Late
This custom is called shousui (守岁 /show-sway/ ‘to keep watch over the year’). People stayed up all night in the past. But now most people stay up till midnight.


Listening to a New Year Bell
A bell is a traditional symbol of Chinese New Year. Chinese people like to go to large squares or temples where there are huge bells rung on New Year's Eve. At midnight the bells start bonging.


People believe that the ringing of a large bell can drive all bad luck away and bring good fortune to them. In recent years people have begun to go to mountain temples to wait for the first ringing of a bell in the new year. Hanshan Temple in Suzhou, in East China's Jiangsu Province, is famous for its bell to herald Chinese New Year. The custom is even beginning to be adopted by the expat community there.

Chinese people believe what you do on the first day on the Chinese lunar calendar affects your luck in the coming year. 


Setting Off Firecrackers and Fireworks