What is Chinese New Year All About?
What do you think of when you hear Chinese New Year, Year of the Monkey?#Chinesenewyear has become a hot topic on social media. People have posted pictures and videos of lions dancing, pocket money, women in Chi Pao (a traditional Chinese costume), and of course, Chinese food. I guess those are the perceptions of Chinese New Year from Westerners.
Chinese New Year is also called the Spring Festival, and it is definitely one of the biggest days in Chinese culture. However, when Chinese people celebrate this special day, it’s a little bit different from what westerners see it as. The keywords/happenings of Chinese New Year in a Chinese person’s mind are: family dinner, traffic, and New Year’s Gala.
Family Dinner
You can’t spend your New Year’s Eve all by yourself. It’s like Christmas and Thanksgiving in China; it’s the time for all members to get together even though they are very far away from each other during other times of the year. In the past, people used to cook a big meal at home, but nowadays a lot of people celebrate the occasion at restaurants. The food people eat differs according to the areas they are from: for example, people in the north like to have dumplings on New Year’s Eve.
Traffic Jam
There’s a term in Chinese called “Spring Traffic.” It means the traffic jam during spring festival. As I mentioned above, no matter how far away people are from their hometowns, they try their best to get home before New Year’s Eve. As a result, the traffic is terrible. Once it took me 8 hours to travel from Shanghai to my grandma’s place by bus, which was only 120 miles. For people who travel for longer distances, they usually take the train. Also, the high-speed train is very popular. If the high-speed train existed before, it would only take me an hour to go to my grandma’s city. However, the train station is packed. Sometimes if feels like a sauna when you’re in the train station.
New Year’s Gala
It's been a family tradition, for many years, to watch the New Year’s Gala, also known as Spring Festival Gala, held by China Central Television Channel (CCTV). It is like the Super Bowl for Chinese families. The gala usually starts at 8:00 p.m. and ends at about 1:00 a.m. the next day. During that time, many TV channels broadcast this gala at the same time. The stage is very fancy, and the visual impact is spectacular. Even though the show itself gets more and more boring, people still keep their TVs on every New Year’s Eve while hanging out with family members. The New Year’s Gala is also a hot topic on Chinese social media. Last week, the mascot for this year’s gala was released, and people hate it.
So when you search #newyearevegala on Chinese social media Weibo, there are 68245472+ results...
Pretty cool, huh?
Happy Chinese New Year from a monkey baby!
-Xueer