What You Will Know About Chinese New Year?

Chinese New Year is a festival celebration of Chinese Communities who are staying around the world. This festival will be celebrated for sixteen days which is from Chinese New Year’s Eve until the Lantern Festival.

When was the first day of Chinese New Year?

The first day of Chinese New Year is the first day of Lunar Month which is called as “ Zheng Yue ” (正月）in the Chinese Calendar. It is also called as “Yuan Dan” （元旦). During this day, the youngsters will go to the olders or more senior members’ houses to visit them. This day is a welcoming guests day. Thus, each Chinese Communities’ houses may have a lot of people to visit so that their relationship and family ties can be strengthened.

Lunar New Year is same as Chinese New Year.

Lunar New Year is not only celebrated in China but also around the world. It is also called the Spring Festival. During this festival, it will have a lot of activities such as Dragon Dance, Lion Dance and the distribution of red envelopes filled with money and cash. As mentioned above, the youngsters will visit the seniors or olders.

In Chinese culture, the olders and senior will give red envelopes, “ Ang Pao” (红包) during this festival. This is because it can bring a meaning to make a lot of money in the new year. Thus, it will be fun that when the kids and other people ask for these envelopes, they will say “ Happy New Year” or “ Gong Xi Fa Cai” so that they can get the wishes from these olders to earn a lot of money throughout the whole of the year.

After that, all the members will gather together and form to organize “ Lo Hei” (捞生). People will do this activity because it brings a good meaning of “tossing up food fortune” by using raw fish salad as a symbol of an “ abundance of wealth and long life”. During this “Lo Hei”, everyone will say some geely words such as " Heng! Ong! Huat!" so that the rest of life in the whole year can live better than the previous.

Lion Dance and Dragon Dance are symbolized as power, wisdom and superiority. This is because these dances can represent bringing good fortune and chasing away spirit evil. It is a way to create Spring Festival mood and bring the happiness mood during Chinese New Year celebrations. Thus, it can be seen that nowadays a lot of shops or malls will invite Lion Dance and Dragon Dance teams to give the performances in front of the shops and at the centre of the shopping malls so that they can earn more money and operate well during the whole year. In Mandarin Pronoun, they will call with “ Heng ! Ong ! Huat ! ”

Preparation for Chinese New Year

The preparation to celebrate the Chinese New Year celebration is very important. This is because it is the actions to remember and pay the respects to the ancestors to earn favors and good fortune for the new year.

At the beginning of the preparation, the chinese communities will start to clean the surrounding of the house. It can be called “ sweeping away the dust” which means to get rid of all the bad luck of the previous years and keep it away. However, during and after the Chinese New Year celebration, they cannot clean again. This is because if they clean their house, the good luck of the year may go away.

After cleaning the house, they will start to decorate their house with banners, lanterns, envelopes. The main colours which will be used are red, oranges and gold colours at the interior and exterior of their house. People will use these colours because these colours are the lucky colours for the Chinese. The symbolize of red and orange colour is the vitality of life and happiness while gold represents wealth and prosperity. Besides, the house will also look fresh thus people will also feel happy. During the decoration, they will not use any black colours items or objects. This is because it may lead to negative impacts and unlucky incidents happen if they put the black colours banners or others. Thus, it can be seen that each house of the Chinese Communities will not have the decoration with black colours items.

All these preparations can take a long time to do it. This is because it needs to be cleaned from the top until the bottom from the house with a large space. Besides, they also need to think about the styles that they want to decorate their house. Thus, people will arrange a timetable for purchasing the Chinese New Year’s Items, the time to clean their house and the time to decorate their house.