The Chinese New Year is a 15 day period at the end of the calendar year, the festivities are celebrated over a week usually the metropolitan areas have big celebrations similar to the western New Year. Typically displays include fireworks throughout the city, besides New Year's Eve there are other important days during the 15 day Chinese New Year Festival including the following.
JIE CAI CENG: Welcoming the Gods of Wealth and Prosperity
This event occurs on the fifth day of the Chinese New Year Festival, it originates from the belief that the gods of prosperity come down from the heavens. This in turn is supposed to bring businesses success and they will often light firecrackers as a tradition to bring them that good fortune.
YUAN XIAO JIE: Festival of Lanterns
This tradition is celebrated on the 15th day of the New Year and marks the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations. The specifics of the event entail, all different types of lanterns being lit through the city streets often poems and riddles are written on them as well. There are also paper lanterns on wheels that are made to look like rabbits or whatever the animal of the year is, 2019 is the year of the pig and 2020 is the year of the rat. The rabbit lanterns originate from a Chinese myth involving a female goddess named Chang E who jumped from the moon.
Symbols
Red envelopes- The red envelopes are filled with money and are typically given to children or unmarried adults without a job. If you’re single and working and making money, you are still expected to give children envelopes. The color red denotes good luck/fortune and happiness/abundance in the Chinese Culture and is usually worn in other Chinese celebrations.
Dragon- The dragon is present in many Chinese cultural celebrations as the Chinese people often think of themselves as descendants of the mythical creature. On the fifth day of the New Year when most people have to go back to work, they will also have dancing dragons perform in the front of the office buildings.
Traditional Foods for Chinese New Year
· Eight Treasures Rice, which contains rice, walnuts, different colored dry fruit, raisins, sweet red bean paste, jujube dates, and almonds
· “Tang Yuan” – black sesame rice ball soup; or a won ton soup
· Chicken, duck, fish and pork dishes
· “Song Gao,” literally translates to “loose cake,” which is made of rice which has been coarsely ground and then formed into a small, sweet round cake
· “Jiu Niang Tang” – sweet wine-rice soup which contains small rice balls
<--Eight Treasures Rice