农历新年 Lunar New Year

 

The Chinese Lunar New Year, also known as “Spring Festival”, means to welcome the Spring Festival of the New Year, one of the four traditional Chinese festivals. This festival is also an important family reunion festival in the life of the Chinese community.

Chinese New Year is also the most solemn traditional festival for Chinese. Therefore, Chinese New Year has many customs and types. At the same time, because the Chinese live in all corners of the world and spread all over the world, they are influenced by the environment and culture, and traditional customs will evolve due to the local regional colors, forming a unique regional custom.

 

(1) Chinese New Year’s custom of “eating”:

eating rice cakes, dumplings, glutinous rice cakes, glutinous rice balls, poached eggs, big meatballs, whole fish, fine wine, oranges, apples, peanuts, melon seeds, sweets, tea and delicacies;

(2) Chinese New Year “preparation” customs:

dusting, washing bedding, preparing New Year goods, pasting Spring Festival couplets, pasting New Year pictures (door god Zhongkui), pasting paper-cuts, pasting window grilles, pasting blessing characters;

(3) Chinese New Year “New Year” customs:

light candles, light fires, set off firecrackers, watch the New Year, give New Year’s money, pay New Year’s greetings, walk to relatives, give new year gifts, go to the ancestor’s grave, visit the flower market, make fire in the community, dance Zhong Kui and many other activities , The ultimate family happiness.

 

For thousands of years, people have made New Year celebrations extremely colorful. Every year, from the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month to the 30th day of the New Year, the folks call this time “Spring Day” or “Dust Sweeping Day”. Sweeping the dust before the Spring Festival is a traditional Chinese custom.

Then every family prepares the New Year’s goods. About 10 days before the festival, people are busy purchasing items. The New Year’s goods include chicken, duck and fish meat, tea wine sauce, north and south roasted seeds and nuts, and sugar bait fruits. For the gifts given when visiting friends, children should buy new clothes and hats, and prepare to wear them during the New Year.

Before the festival, the New Year’s message in yellow and red paper should be pasted on the door of the residence, that is, the Spring Festival couplets written in red paper. Brightly colored New Year pictures with auspicious meanings are posted in the room. The ingenious girls cut out beautiful window grilles and put them on the windows. In front of the door hang big red lanterns or paste the characters fortune and the god of wealth and door gods (Zhong Kui, Qin Qiong, Jingde), etc. Words can also be posted upside down, passers-by are blessed, that is, blessing has arrived, all these activities are to add enough festive atmosphere to the festival.

The enthusiasm during the New Year is not only permeated in every house, but also in the streets and alleys of various places. In some local markets, there are customs such as exorcism dancing bells, lion dancing, dragon lanterns, performing social fires, visiting the flower market, and visiting temple fairs.

During this period, the lanterns filled the city and the streets filled with tourists. The excitement was unprecedented. It was not until the fifteenth day of the first lunar month and the Lantern Festival before the Spring Festival really ended.

清明节 Ching Ming Festival

 

Ching Ming Festival is a festival that Malaysian Chinese attach great importance to. When the Qingming Festival approaches, people will sacrifice in different ways to remember the deceased ancestors. Everyone knows that the Ching Ming Festival is an important traditional festival for the Chinese, but many people are completely unclear about the origin of the Ching Ming Festival. Chinese people all over the world also spend the Ching Ming Festival in different ways. Today, let us take a look at where the Ching Ming Festival comes from, and how Chinese people all over the world celebrate the Ching Ming Festival.

Ching Ming Festival is one of China’s “four major festivals”: Spring Festival, Ching Ming Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival. It can be seen that the importance of this festival in the minds of the Chinese is extremely high. Ching Ming Festival is also known as “Outing Qing Festival”, “Xingqing Festival” and “March Festival”. According to calculations based on the moon’s rotation, Qingming Festival usually falls on April 5th each year, around the first day of the third month of the lunar calendar. It is also the fifth of China’s 24 festivals or the 108th day after the winter solstice. In 1935, the government of the Republic of China set Qingming Festival on April 5th each year and designated it as a national holiday. On May 20, 2006, Qingming Festival was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.

Ching Ming Festival falls on the fifteenth day after the vernal equinox, which is also the fourth or fifth day of the kilometer. People will go to the cemetery to visit the tombs of their ancestors, pray for their deceased relatives, and offer various sacrifices to them. It is said that by burning a Qingming sacrifice in the cemetery, the deceased relative can obtain and use these things in another world.

Many people burn incense sticks, gold bars or paper money made from incense paper, clothes, food, and various paper crafts. As we all know, the younger generation sometimes even provides tablets, mobile phones, electronic products, skin care products and other health supplements.

七夕节 Qixi Festival

 

The Qixi Festival, also known as Qiqiao Festival, Qiqiao Festival or Seven Sister’s Birthday, originated in China and is a traditional festival of Chinese regions and East Asian countries. It comes from the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl and is celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month.
This festival is an important representative of Chinese festival culture and an important link in the annual festival cycle chain. Only with it can the festival culture be rich and colorful. If it is lost, the integrity of the festival culture will be lost, so it will not be forgotten by people. . In recent years, the Qixi Festival has been hailed as the “Eastern Valentine’s Day”, and its significance has become more and more important.
The formation of the Qixi Festival is related to the folk story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. Its earliest origin may be in the Spring and Autumn Period. Tanabata at that time was a sacrifice to Altair and Vega. After the Han Dynasty, it began to be associated with the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, and it officially became a festival for women.
Because ancient women wanted to follow the example of the Weaver Girl. Therefore, on the birthday of the Seventh Sister, they would offer sacrifices to the Seventh Sister, praying for a happy marriage and ingenuity, called “Qiao Qiao”. During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the Qixi Qiqiao Festival became very grand, and there was a market specializing in selling Qiqiao accessories, called Qiqiao City.