Happy Chinese Lunar New Year
Today is the Chinese Lunar New Year‘s eve, which are regarded as the most important festival in China and mark the beginning of a year with warm spring coming, so it's also called Spring Festival. We are blogging and aggregating on the what Chinese Blogger are celebrating the evening, with photos, stories and more!
This year is called “Dog Year”. There is a cycle of 12 years in which each year was represented by a kind of totally 12 animals, and this year was for the Dog. People celebrating this holiday by fireworks, banquet, and family reunion in the 7 days off session. “Dog Stamp” and “Dog Year Wishing Card“
The most important part of the festival is the reunion dinner, where family members joined together in new year's eve, served with a banquet of traditional Chinese food like noodles and dumplings. Andrea of T-Salon have some photos showing how the food is like. Daxing Stef have the photo that explained the procedure of making a special kinds of dumpling called “Kok Tsai“. An article on Xinhua news agency reports the debate over a reunion dinner worth of $24444.
Firework is also the very interesting part of new year. When the bell rings at the 12 o'clock, the firework should be set, which means “Goodbye to the last year and Greeting with the new year.” However for recent years firework is prohibited or confined to certain areas for security and environmental reasons in major cities like Beijing. This year the prohibition was lifted and the Beijing police are sending short messages via cellphone to remind citizens of safety in playing with fireworks.
Sending SMS(Short Message) is also the rising phenomenon in China. People use it to send wishes and blessings to their friends, colleagues and relatives. It was estimated that during Spring Festival which will last from Jan29 to Feb4, there are more than 10 billion short messages sent over the country.
After the dinner, came the “Spring Festival Eve Gala” by China Central Television. For last 20 years, it has become one of the major entertainment of Chinese, featuring many star, singing&dancing and traditional folk performance like cross talk. But due to the abundance in means of entertainment, the audience's passion has dropped dramatically. Raymond Zhou, a blogger and movie critics tells you why. He uses the word “Camp” coined by Susan Sontag to describe it.
BingFeng gives you some suggestions in New Year if you are in Shanghai and he is doing his New Year Blogging.
Wayne, an American who lived in Xiamen, China wrote a great post about his understanding of Chinese New Year and suggested on helping foreign people mark the festival like a native.
Laoluo, a very famous blogger, wrote his news year's wishes. China Digital Times has translated part of his post.
Benetleong teaches you how to read and pronounce Chinese idioms and characters that you usually says when you meet someone in the festival.
See more photos via Flickr cluster, including the clothing, performance, paper back, and parade in China town.
Find more posts via Technorati and Icerocket.
6 comments
I just walked into a supermarket in Brussels: they had all their staff dressed up like Chinese (like the pre-liberation ones). Very strange.
Happy Chinese New Year of the Dog! I for one appreciate your sharing and educating all of us who check out Global Voices.I was always impressed by the idea that the Chinese calendar is so much older than the Western calendar. I know the Chinese are a fine ancient people who have given much to the world in many ways: from paper to gunpowder and beyond. My best friend next door was a young Chinese Brother named Bic who helped to spur me to reading and studying. I grew to appreciate Chinese culture in general. Later, this made me open to reading Chairman Mao!
I read that 2007 is called the year Of the Pig, but here it is called the Dog Year. What is correct?