Custom Of The Spring Festival

Custom Of The Spring Festival

The spring festival is a traditional Chinese festival and the most important one of the whole year. Through the envelopment of thousands of years, a series of customs are still the same as before.

一．Sweeping the dust（除尘）

“Dust” is homophonic with “chen” in Chinese，which is 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.

二．Pasting spring couplets(贴春联)

“The spring couplet is a special from of literature in China. the spring couplet is composed of two antithetical sentences on both sides of the door and an inscription(题字), usually an fortunately phrase, above the gate. The sentences pasting on the right side of door is called the first line of the couplet and the one on the left is the second line. On the eve of the spring festival, every household will paste on doors a spring couplet written on red paper to give a happy and prosperous atmosphere of the festival.

三．Pasting paper-cuts and “up-sided fu ”（贴窗花和倒“福”）

Paper-cuts, usually with lucky patterns, give a happy and prosperous atmosphere of the festival and express the good wishes of Chinese people

looking forward to a good life. In addition to pasting paper-cuts on windows, it is common for Chinese to paste the character “fu”，big and small, on walls, doors, and doorposts around the houses. “Fu”shows yearning toward a good life. Some people even invert the character “fu”to signify that blessing has arrived because “inverted” is a homonym for “arrive” in Chinese

四．Stay up late on New Year’s Eve(守岁)

The tradition of staying up late to see New Year is originated from an interesting folk tale. In ancient China there lived a monster named Year, who was very terrible. Year always went out from its burrow on New Year’s Eve to eat people. Therefore, on every New Year’s Eve, every household would have supper together. After dinner, no one dared go to sleep and all the family members would sit together, chatting and emboldening (壮胆) each other. Gradually the habit of staying up late on New Year’s Eve is forward. Thus in China, “Cerebrating the Spring Festival” is also called “passing over the year”.

五．The CCTV New Year’s Gala(春节联欢晚会)

The New Year’s Gala is a variety show held by China Central Television since 1983. For every year at the turn of the Lunar New Year, the program begins at 8:00PM and lasts five or six hours. For over twenty years, its value has gone far beyond a variety.

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