By Helen Yang, Mandarin Language Faculty
Chinese New Year, also known as Lunar New Year or Spring Festival, is the most important festival in many Asian countries. According to the Chinese Zodiac, 2020 is the Year of Rat.
Next week, students from the Mandarin language class and international students are organizing a Forest Ridge Lunar New Year Celebration. Our entire community of students, parents and faculty are invited to participate in a hands-on celebration of Lunar New Year traditions. Students will learn how to make Chinese dumplings, write in Chinese calligraphy, play chopstick games, and learn about the Chinese Zodiac.
As with holidays around the globe, Lunar New Year celebrations are filled with traditional foods, bright decorations and entertaining performances.
What do people do to celebrate Lunar New Year?
Before the holiday, people have a general cleaning of their homes to welcome the New Year. People hang red lanterns in the streets, office buildings, and doors of houses. Hanging a red lantern in front of the door is believed to drive off bad luck. New Year Red Couplets are pasted on doors with good wishes expressed on them. Red paper cuttings, the art of cutting designs and then gluing them to a contrasting backing or a transparent surface, are popular as well.
On New Year’s Eve, families sit together to watch the Spring Festival Gala, one of the most-watched TV shows, which displays various performances. Most people send WeChat red envelopes or short messages to relatives and friends by phone and set off firecrackers at midnight. Billions of fireworks go up in China to drive off bad luck. People visit relatives, watch dragon and lion dances, go to Temple Fairs to enjoy all kinds of folk arts, taste traditional snacks and watch performances in the park. The most common New Year’s gifts are red envelopes, which customarily given to children. Red envelopes with money inside are believed to bring good luck throughout the new year.
What do people eat during the holiday?
Fish is a traditional dish on the Chinese New Year dinner menu because "fish" sounds like another Chinese word which means “surplus”. Chinese people like to have a surplus at the end of the year, because they believe that if they have saved something at the end of the year, then they can make more in the next year.
With a history of more than 1,800 years, dumplings are a classic lucky food for the New Year that is especially popular in North China. Dumplings can be made to look like ancient Chinese silver ingots. It is believed that the more dumplings you eat, the more money you could make in the New Year. Glutinous rice cake is another lucky food eaten on Chinese New Year's Eve. In Chinese, "glutinous rice cake" sounds like it means "getting higher year by year". Sweet rice balls are the main food for the Lantern Festival, which is the highlight and the end of the New Year celebration. The Chinese pronunciation and the round shape of sweet rice balls are symbols for reunion and being together. That's why they are favored by the Chinese during the New Year.
- Forest Ridge Blog