Africa -China Review Africa -China Cooperation and Transformation
Published: January 19,2023
By Staff writer
Many Chinese are now on an almost a whole month holiday celebrating the Chinese New Year also known as the Spring Festival. It is said to be the most important and the oldest festival in China marking New Year on the lunar calendar. The Spring Festival is said to represent a desire for a new life.
The celebration is called Spring Festival because it marks the beginning of Spring and end of winter. Historians say that through history, the festival had different names at different times. The most popular name among others is ‘Yuan Dan,’ which means ‘beginning’ and ‘morning’ signifying the beginning of Spring and a new year.
How did the Spring Festival begin?
Historians give different explanations but what is agreed on in common is that the word Nian, which in modern Chinese means “year”, was originally the name of a monster beast that started to prey on people the night before the beginning of a new year.
One legend therefore, suggests that the beast Nian had a very big mouth that would swallow a great many people with one bite. People were very scared. One day, an old man came to their rescue, offering to subdue Nian. To Nian he said, “I hear say that you are very capable, but can you swallow the other beasts of prey on earth instead of people who are by no means of your worthy opponents?” So, it did swallow many of the beasts of prey on earth that also harrassed people and their domestic animals from time to time.
After that, the old man disappeared riding the beast Nian. He turned out to be an immortal god. Now that Nian is gone and other beasts of prey are also scared into forests, people begin to enjoy their peaceful life. Before the old man left, he had told people to put up red paper decorations on their windows and doors at each year’s end to scare away Nian in case it sneaked back again, because red is the color the beast feared the most.
From then on, the tradition of observing the conquest of Nian is carried on from generation to generation. The term “Guo Nian”, which may mean “Survive the Nian” becomes today “Celebrate the (New) Year” as the word “guo” in Chinese having both the meaning of “pass-over” and “observe”. The custom of putting up red paper and firing fire-crackers to scare away Nian should it have a chance to run loose is still practiced.
In the past, the time of Spring Festival also varied. During the Han Dynasty, the beginning of spring was the Spring Festival, but during the Northern and Southern Dynasty, the entire spring was viewed as the Spring Festival. After 1949, it was decided that January 1 on the solar calendar would be the ‘Yuan Dan’ and January 1st on the lunar calendar would be the Spring Festival.
In Chinese tradition many people travel to their home towns and villages to celebrate the festival with their family members so that they can share the happiness. The festival allows family reunion where people enjoy traditional foods that are prepared for the occasion.
During the Spring Festival, people hold a variety of distinctive celebrations in order to honor deities and ancestors, symbolize the replacing of the old with the new, and to welcome the New Year and pray for a good harvest. In Northern China, it is customary to eat jiaozi at the reunion dinner on Chinese New Year’s Eve. However, within China, regional customs concerning jiaozi vary widely, with people in some places eating jiaozi on New Year’s Eve, and people in other places eating jiaozi on the first day of the first lunar month. In some mountainous regions in Northern China, people eat jiaozi for breakfast from the first day to the fifth day of the first lunar month. People eat jiaozi to celebrate the New Year and pray for good fortune.
Happy Spring Festival.
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