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Other interesting things about Chinese New Year are the red envelopes, the lion dancer and the fire works; red envelopes are what every child looks forward to . They count how many they collect from adults. On Chinese New Year’s Day, adults always give children and elderly people red envelopes with money inside it, the symbolic giving of the money represents a wish for luck and wealth in the coming year.
Food Image Credit Red Envelopes Dragon Dance
By Culong Lac, ESOL
Chinese New Year is the most popular festival in China. It is sometimes called spring festival. The Chinese New Year follows the lunar calendar.
On 14 February it will be the start of the Year of the Tiger. It is also known by its formal name of Geng Yin. People start preparing for the New Year one month before. They buy presents, decorations, food and new clothes.
The day before New Year people clean their houses to sweep away bad luck. They decorate their doors and windows with Chinese characters. The characters are usually about happiness, wealth and long life.
The night before Chinese New Year is the most exciting part. People follow traditions about food and clothes. Dinner is usually seafood and dumplings. The things they eat have meanings, prawns are for the energy and happiness, dried oysters are for good wishes, raw fish salad is to bring good luck and prosperity.
People usually wear something red for protection from evil spirits, they never wear black or white because these are colors for mourning.
On the Chinese New Year’s Day people follow an ancient custom called Red Packet. Married couples give children and unmarried adults money in red envelopes, then the family goes from door to door to wish Happy New Year to everyone, first they go to their relatives and then their neighbors. It is a time to forgive people.
On Chinese New Year Day, it’s a big event for the Chinese, people get up early in the morning, dress themselves with new clothes, women and young children dress in colourful clothes, men put their smart suits on. Like every Chinese New Year’s Day, we eat sweet food in the morning, there’s a favourite dish I like which is round sticky rice balls in syrup, that my mum use to make, called “Tuan Yuan” which means “family together”. It’s a traditional dish which most families must have in the morning.
Other interesting things about Chinese New Year are the red envelopes, the lion dancer and the fire works; red envelopes are what every child looks forward to . They count how many they collect from adults. On Chinese New Year’s Day, adults always give children and elderly people red envelopes with money inside it, the symbolic giving of the money represents a wish for luck and wealth in the coming year. The lion dance is the greatest event for celebrating Chinese New Year. They dress in lion clothes and dance in the street and go door to door. This brings good luck and strength to the house and businesses they visit. Chinese people like to shoot fireworks on New Year’s Day, this is suppose to scare evil and bad things away, they believe it wakes up the dragon and brings back the spring.
In my childhood memory, there were so many ways of celebrating the Chinese New Year, each nation has their own way of celebrating, but the thing we all have in common is that families get together to celebrate the traditional activities and events.
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