Chinese Festivals
(中国的节日)
5 min read
Festivals, deeply embedded in Chinese traditions, are key parts of Chinese culture. They are not only markers of the seasons to be celebrated, but also powerful expressions of cultural identity, values, and social cohesion. They provide occasions for social interactions, family gatherings, and the transmission of cultural knowledge to the next generation, reflecting values like family harmony and respect for elders. Moreover, many festivals, like the Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival, are rooted in historical events and legends, shaping people’s appreciation of history. Festival foods, decorations, and activities often carry symbolic meanings, blending historical, agricultural, and spiritual influences.
Chinese New Year (春节)
Chinese New Year, the first day of the lunisolar calendar, always falls on the second new moon after a Winter Solstice. In the days before the festival, people clean their homes, stock up on provisions, prepare food, and put up huichuns (挥春, first two images below), which are auspicious and eye-catching phrases to express wishes for the New Year. Many consist of four Chinese characters, but they can also be just one character. The Lunar New Year Fair (年宵市场, third and fourth images)—held annually for about a week before the New Year for selling huichuns, flowers, New Year decorations, and food—is a serious tradition in Guangdong Province (广东省). Then on the eve, with high expectation of what is to come, families gather together for a feast, often with regional specialty foods (fifth and sixth images).
One of the traditions is to decorate one’s home with New Year woodblock prints called nianhua (年画), which blends folk art, folk beliefs, and cultural symbolism. A traditional Chinese belief is that more children will bring greater happiness; thus, one of the most popular nianhua motif is cherubic babies for expressing the hope for fertility (left image below). Folk deities that often appear in nianhua include Door Gods (门神, right image), the Wealth God (财神), the Kitchen God (灶君), and the Longevity God (寿星老).
On New Year day and the week that follows, families visit friends, neighbors, and relatives and give red envelops (红包), with money inside, to children. Public festivities, in which lion dances (image below) are performed, are often held by communities and cultural organizations.
In China today, even though the official New Year holidays, known as the Spring Festival (春节), last only for about a week, many people take a month-long leave to visit their hometowns, some over thousands of kilometers away. This nationwide ebb and flow of human tide is known as the Spring Festival Migration (春运). People in Southeast Asia, especially among the Chinese diaspora communities, celebrate New Year often with local twists. Family reunions, red envelope, and lion dance, are adapted with local flavors and multicultural influences.
Qingming Festival (清明节)
Qingming Festival is celebrated on the 15th day after the Spring Equinox. It is a day to visit ancestral tombs, pay tribute to ancestors, and burn incense and display food and flower as offerings. The main activity is the cleaning of ancestral tombs, referred to as “tomb sweeping” (扫墓). In rural Guangdong, sometimes a whole roasted-pig is used as offering in a tribute to ancestors and the day often ends with a feast of the food offerings. Beyond China, it is celebrated by the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia and by people in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan.
Dragon Boat Festival (端午节)
Many believe that the Dragon Boat Festival, the fifth day of the fifth month in the Chinese calendar, originated from the suicide by drowning of Qu Yuan (屈原), the patriotic poet and statesman of the State of Chu (楚国), in 278 BCE. In an attempt to rescue him, the local people beat drums on their boats to scare off the fish, and dropping dumplings into the river to prevent fish from attacking Qu Yuan’s body. Every year, the Dragon Boat Festival, with the traditions of eating zongzi dumplings (粽子, left image below) and racing dragon boats (right image), usually among community teams in a friendly yet serious atmosphere, is celebrated to commemorate this attempt at rescuing Qu Yuan. Dragon boat race is an ancient tradition (opening image) and boats of various sizes, some with capacity up to 80 people, are raced. Of course, the day always ends with a feast of seasonal foods, no matter where you are in China.
Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节)
The Mid-Autumn Festival, on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar and always a day with a full noon, is observed in China and the East and Southeast Asia, especially among Chinese diaspora communities. In the Chinese tradition, the full moon symbolizes family unity, thus the festival is an occasion for family reunion. No matter where they are, Chinese people always celebrate this festival with lanterns (left image below) and mooncakes (月饼, right image); the round-shape of both symbolizes completeness and unity. Mooncakes can be sweet or savory, but the most popular type is filled with sweetened lotus-seed paste and salted egg-yolk. A popular Mid-Autumn mythology is the Moon Goddess Chang’e (嫦娥), accompanied by her jade rabbit (玉兔). The shadows on the moon, in a clear autumn-sky, is interpreted as the silhouette of Chang’e and her jade rabbit. Another popular legend associated with the festival is of the Han Chinese overthrowing the Mongols at the end of the Yuan Dynasty in the mid-14th century by concealing the uprising message inside mooncakes.
Festival foods
Chinese festival-foods are more than just meals, they are symbols of cultural values, historical memory, and collective hope. For example, in the Chinese language, fish (鱼) is homophone for “abundance” (余), and is often eaten during Chinese New Year to express the hope for a bountiful year ahead. For the same reason, dumplings that look like silver ingots (元宝) are eaten on New Year’s Eve. Tangtuan (汤团), a dessert shaped like a small ping-pong ball and made with glutinous flour, is consumed on the 15th day and the first full moon of a New Year, to express the hope for family harmony. Zongzi, a fist-sized dumpling made of glutinous rice and mung bean and can be savory or sweet, is eaten during the Dragon Boat Festival as a symbolic gesture to ward off diseases and evil spirits. Mooncakes, shaped like the full moon, are eaten in Mid-Autumn Festival to symbolize family unity. For Chinese people, eating festival-foods, which are symbols of respect for family values, social harmony, and traditions, becomes an act of cultural preservation.
Additional resource:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlPExNPyPwQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lL3xgRfqHU
Photo credit: Baidu.com