With the Chinese Spring Festival just around the corner, China and the world are enthusiastically preparing themselves for the most important celebration in the Chinese calendar: the Lunar New Year.
The grand celebration, marking the start of the Chinese Lunar New Year, has been steeped in China's history, traditions and customs for thousands of years. To date, the time-honored festival has evolved into a globalized cultural feast beyond borders, an example of extensive appreciation of the Chinese culture and a colorful fusion of civilizations.
Residents in the U.S. state of Texas are greatly excited about the upcoming celebrations for the Chinese Lunar New Year. In downtown Houston, a large celebration has been slated for next week in front of the City Hall, including a parade, dragon and lion dances, stalls and vendors selling Chinese food and traditional cultural demonstrations.
Barbara Quattro, a 72-year-old local retiree, said she was a fan of traditional Chinese celebrations.
"I live in the most diverse neighborhood in Houston, so we have wonderful opportunities to observe and celebrate the holidays of many different cultures without ever leaving home," said Quattro.
Thousands of miles away from Houston, London is also planning a variety of traditional Chinese celebrations at the city's largest shopping mall Westfield London on Saturday, ranging from lion dances to calligraphy demonstrations, lantern workshops to stilt walking. Organizers of the event said in a statement that they hope such activities would bring everyone luck, fortune, happiness and good health in the upcoming year.
Giving lucky money is also an old tradition during the Spring Festival. The custom has been adopted by a Japanese shop in the town of Hakone in southern Japan. The shop will give every Chinese customer five yen as lucky money to wish them good fortune, as the pronunciation of five yen in Japanese means fate with good luck.
Another popular yet modern celebration of the Spring Festival is holding a New Year's concert. In recent years, orchestras and concert halls around the world have reached out to Chinese musicians to jointly follow suit, including the San Francisco Symphony, New York Philharmonic Orchestra and Carnegie Hall.
To facilitate the general public's understanding of the Chinese Spring Festival, the U.S. TV series "Fresh Off the Boat" will feature a special episode introducing the festival, which is the first of its kind in the United States. The episode, according to the crew, aims at narrowing the cultural gaps between various ethnicities in American society.
Not just a symbolic mark in the Chinese calendar, the Spring Festival also demonstrates the essence of ancient Chinese civilization and the long-cherished family values held not only by the Chinese people, but also by people all over the world.
As opposed to the important festivals in Western countries that are strongly rooted in religion, the Chinese Spring Festival is the result of the interaction between the ancient Chinese and nature. By bidding farewell to winter and welcoming spring, ancient Chinese people expressed their gratitude to nature and prayed for good harvests for the coming year during the festival. Such a celebration highlighted the close relationship between mankind and nature.
Ancient philosopher and Chinese sage Laozi later developed the simple concept into the profound theory that man is an integral part of nature, which has long played an important part in various areas of Chinese society including food, traditional Chinese medicine, architecture and interior design.
Nowadays, celebrating the Spring Festival can also serve as a reminder of the interdependency between humans and nature, which is in line with the modern concept of sustainable development that has gained global consensus.
The Chinese Spring Festival is going global, as it also represents family values shared and honored by different civilizations across the world. The festival has long been the most important family gathering for the Chinese people, as it must be celebrated with a banquet or feast on the Spring Festival Eve.
In the following days, it is customary for people to visit their close relatives until the Lantern Festival that concludes the Spring Festival on the 15th day of the lunar year.
