Happy Spring Festival! Here are all the ways you can celebrate!

BEIJING, Jan. 27, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- A news report from China.org.cn on Spring Festival:

How do the Chinese celebrate the Spring Festival? If your knowledge is limited to "eating dumplings", "hanging spring couplets" or "receiving red envelopes," you may want to watch on.

The Spring Festival is the most significant traditional festivity in China, while also being a prominent cultural symbol for China's 56 ethnic groups. When people celebrate the Spring Festival, bidding farewell to the old and saying hello to the new, vivid characteristics of their ethnic groups are often showcased in their celebrations. But if we trace these customs to their original inspirations, we can see that many of them bear similar significance.

For example, during the Spring Festival, people of many ethnic groups will choose to eat a specific food, which reflects their wishes for the coming year. The She and Miao people, to start with, will make ciba, a Chinese-style cake made from glutinous rice, as a wish that the year ahead will be just as sweet and pleasant as the dessert's flavor. And there's also the fish. Like the Han people, fish is also a must-have dish for numerous households of Dong and Manchu ethnic groups, since "fish" shares the same pronunciation as the word for "surplus," symbolizing good wishes for a year of wealth.

The customs of many ethnic groups also reflect common worship and respect for nature. For example, people of multiple ethnic groups including Bouyei and Nu, regard the first bucket of water they fetch after the new year rings in to be pure and auspicious; for the Zhuang ethnic group, people usually keep a "new year's fire" burning throughout the night; while for some Yi people who live in Yunnan province, pine is worshipped, with local inhabitants putting up pine branches in their yards and laying pine leaves on the floor, to pray for tranquillity, harmony and auspiciousness.

At the time of the Spring Festival, not only do families get together, but people of various ethnic groups also engage in all kinds of entertainment, including singing and dancing, competitions of various forms, etc.

In recent years, many regions where multiple ethnic groups inhabit have begun to host more inclusive celebrations, as well as shows where performers from different ethnic groups can present their customs to a larger audience. The unique cultures and traditions of the 56 ethnic groups, have pooled more recognition and aroused more resonance through the common bond of the Spring Festival.

Last month, the Spring Festival was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, another milestone after it became a UN holiday in 2023. Although the festival originated in China, it has gone global and has almost immersed itself in the social and cultural fabrics of many countries. Countries like Vietnam and South Korea have listed the Spring Festival as a public holiday, and Panama has announced it to be a national holiday.

For quite some years, famous landmarks have put on their "special costumes" for the Spring Festival with festive vibes being very tangible across many cities outside China. For many friends from other countries, the Spring Festival is no longer a vague term, but has been concretized via themes like the customs and the Chinese zodiac animals.

What's more, in the Spring Festival celebration events, we saw Hungarian folk dance and traditional Chinese dance performing on the same stage; Czech folk songs were played by musicians from both China and the Czech Republic in a Spring Festival concert in Prague… Thanks to the Spring Festival, the world gets to know China better, and vice versa. With the festival as a conduit, cultures and civilizations are seeing beyond "differences", and realizing more exchanges and integration.

After all these examples, it's not hard to see how the Spring Festival spells "diverse" in its DNA. Such diversity strikes a perfect balance with the unity and solidarity shown by China's ethnic groups, as well as with the harmony and inclusiveness of Chinese culture in the kaleidoscope of global civilizations.

Happy Spring Festival! May you enjoy a year of harmony and prosperity, happiness and peace!

China Mosaic
http://www.china.org.cn/video/node_7230027.htm
Happy Spring Festival! Here are all the ways you can celebrate!
http://www.china.org.cn/video/2025-01/26/content_117687265.htm