Spring Festival offers window into China

The customs and influence of the Spring Festival and people's attitudes toward it have changed deeply in an inconspicuous way over the past few decades.

The Spring Festival is the most important traditional Chinese festival, and has been given special emotional and cultural meanings. During the festival, family members gather together, visit friends and relatives, eat delicious food, and wear new clothes. These traditions have been passed on from one generation of Chinese to the next. The festival is also a good opportunity to offer sacrifices to ancestors, pray for good fortune and pass on traditions, and review social progress and economic development. It contains cultural codes familiar to Chinese, and is an important part of Chinese society's cultural memory.

As dramatic social, cultural, and economic changes have occurred, the cultural symbols of the Spring Festival have also changed accordingly, though its ritual significance and core values remain unchanged. From visiting friends and relatives in person to paying New Year's calls via phone, micro-blogging, or mobile chat apps, information technology has changed the way people interact with each other. From China Central Television's dominance in holding Spring Festival galas to local television stations' competitive galas as well as online galas and migrant workers' galas, Spring Festival galas are unprecedentedly diversified. From fabulous fireworks displays to greater attention on personal safety and environmental protection, from sumptuous feasts to the "clear your plate" campaign, and from watching the Spring Festival gala with family at home to spending the festival with family at tourist attractions, people are becoming more reasonable and having more choices when it comes to celebrate the festival.

Furthermore, the international influence of the Spring Festival is on a steady rise. A few decades ago, only a few foreign media outlets paid attention to this Chinese festival, and their coverage was just focused on typical Chinese elements such as the dragon and lion dance, dumplings and fireworks. However, Nowadays the Spring Festival has become a window for the foreign media to observe China. Greetings and best wishes from foreign leaders have become a "routine dish" in the Chinese New Year. The Spring Festival has even become a public holiday in certain countries. Many foreign businesspeople have also taken the festival as a good opportunity to promote sales. Overall, the influence and attractiveness of the Spring Festival is crossing cultural and geographical boundaries.

What matches the growing international influence of the Spring Festival is the increasing number of overseas Chinese, China's growing international status and comprehensive national strength, and the country's remarkable achievements in promoting exchanges between Chinese and other cultures. Like political, economic, and military progress, the increase in soft power is also an important window into China's present and future.

The Spring Festival has changed as times have changed and the country has progressed. By analyzing the changes concerning the festival, people may grasp a good opportunity for a harmonious fusion of tradition and modernity, gain an insight into the Chinese society way of living, and find effective ways of passing on valuable traditional culture, facilitating coordination between spiritual development and modernization, urbanization, and promoting cultural diversity and creativity.