CHINESE NEW YEAR: 2008-2011

It’s the year of the Ox and the whole of China is on the move visiting friends and family and setting off a million fireworks. In fact, it’s the largest human migration - more interurban trips are taken in China during this period than there are total population in China.

Chinese New Year is a colorful holiday celebrated starting on the first day of the first lunar month. Many businesses will close for a few days up to 2 weeks during this period. Here are a few of the interesting traditions:

  1. New Year’s Eve dinner is for members of the family, near and far to get together

  2. Clean house before the new year, so you won’t have to “sweep your good luck away”

  3. First day is a day to visit the oldest members of the family, there may be a lion dance to evict evil spirits, and as always many fireworks.

  4. Second day married daughters visit their parents, all pray to ancestors and be especially nice to dogs

  5. Third and fourth days don’t visit your relatives

  6. Fifth day eat dumplings

  7. Seventh day is the common birthday for all people as they consider themselves one year older

  8. Fifteenth day is the Lantern Festival


Our school celebrated Chinese New Year on Friday 23 Jan with traditional Lion Dance, Dragon Dance, Drums, Tai Chi performers, Chinese crafts, Beijing Opera and many students and teachers all in traditional dress. It was a colorful, noisy start to the day! The paper cutter was amazing - the intricate designs come from one piece of paper. See some photos and short movies.

We’re going to brave the crowds and take a 4 hour train ride down to Hongzhou for a couple of days to visit a friend. We’ll let you know how our travel along with a couple of million Chinese goes...

Photo Gallery: click on each to see a larger image.

VIDEOS - VERY SHORT
The Dragon and Lion dances are traditions which will 

  1. chase away negative energies with the sounding of drums and cymbals

  2. scare away evil spirits with the powerful dance and presence of a dragon or lion

  3. bring in auspiciousness as symbols of strength and good luck
FIREWORKS! This short video clip is a sample of the fireworks set off over Chinese New Year - this goes on sporadically over a 2 week period with 3 intense nights like this. From sunset to midnight - continuous all over town. This clip is just what we saw out our back window - imagine this all around in full stereo all over the city, for hours and hours - in every city in China!