Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, marks the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. It is one of the most important holidays in Chinese culture and was placed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list in 2024. Marking the end of winter and the beginning of spring, this festival takes place from Chinese New Year's Eve (the evening preceding the first day of the year) to the Lantern Festival, held on the 15th day of the year. The first day of the Chinese New Year falls on the new moon that appears between 21 January and 20 February.

The Chinese New Year is associated with several myths and customs. The festival was traditionally a time to honour deities and ancestors. Throughout China, different regions celebrate the New Year with distinct local customs and traditions. Chinese New Year's Eve is an occasion for Chinese families to gather for the annual reunion dinner. Traditionally, every family would thoroughly clean their house, symbolically sweeping away any ill fortune to make way for incoming good luck. Windows and doors may be decorated with red paper-cuts and couplets representing themes such as good fortune, happiness, wealth, and longevity. Other activities include lighting firecrackers and giving money in red envelopes.

Chinese New Year is also celebrated worldwide in regions and countries with significant overseas Chinese or Sinophone populations, especially in Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand. It is also prominent beyond Asia, especially in Australia, Canada, France, Mauritius, New Zealand, Peru, South Africa, the United Kingdom, as well as in many other European countries, and the United States. Chinese New Year has influenced celebrations, commonly referred to collectively as Lunar New Year, in other cultures, such as the Losar of Tibet, the Tết of Vietnam, the Seollal of Korea, the Shōgatsu of Japan, and the Ryukyu New Year (Okinawan: Sjoogwaci).

Names

In Chinese, the festival is commonly known as the "Spring Festival" (traditional Chinese: 春節; simplified Chinese: 春节; pinyin: Chūnjié), as the spring season in the lunisolar calendar traditionally starts with lichun, the first of the twenty-four solar terms that the festival celebrates around the time of the Chinese New Year. The name was first proposed in 1914 by Yuan Shikai, who was the interim president of the Republic of China. The official usage of the name "Spring Festival" was retained by the government of the People's Republic of China, but the government of the Republic of China based in Taiwan has since adopted the name "Traditional Chinese New Year".

The festival is also called "Lunar New Year" in English, despite the traditional Chinese calendar being lunisolar and not lunar. However, "Chinese New Year" is still a commonly used translation for people of non-Chinese backgrounds. Along with the Han Chinese inside and outside of Greater China, as many as 29 of the 55 ethnic minority groups in China also celebrate Chinese New Year. Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines celebrate it as an official festival.

In recent years, the English translation of the Spring Festival has sparked controversy. In many countries outside China, "Lunar New Year" is considered a more inclusive name and has been widely used for years; however, some Chinese public opinion views "Lunar New Year" as an act of "De-Sinicization." In 2025, the Chinese tea brand CHAGEE translated the Spring Festival as "Lunar New Year," which caused controversy. On January 24, 2025, CHAGEE urgently changed its copy and apologized.

Dates in the Chinese lunisolar calendar

The Chinese calendar defines the lunisolar month containing the winter solstice as the eleventh month, meaning that Chinese New Year usually falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice (rarely the third, if an intercalary month occurs). In more than 96 percent of years, the Chinese New Year is the closest new moon to the beginning of spring (lichun) according to the calendar. In the Gregorian calendar, Chinese New Year occurs on the new moon that falls between 21 January and 20 February.

Mythology

According to legend, Chinese New Year started with combating a mythical beast called the Nian (a beast that lives under the sea or in the mountains that looks like a lion with horns) during the annual Spring Festival. The Nian would eat villagers, especially children, in the middle of the night. One year, all the villagers decided to hide from the beast. An older man appeared before the villagers went into hiding and said that he would stay the night and would get revenge on the Nian. The old man put up red papers and set off firecrackers. The day after, the villagers came back to their town and saw that nothing had been destroyed. They assumed that the old man was a deity who had come to save them. The villagers then understood that the Nian was afraid of the colour red and loud noises. As the New Year approached, the tradition grew: villagers wore red clothing, hung red lanterns and spring scrolls on windows and doors, and used firecrackers and drums to frighten away the Nian. From then on, the Nian never came to the village again. The Nian was eventually captured by Hongjun Laozu, an ancient Taoist monk.

History

Before the new year celebration was established, ancient Chinese gathered and celebrated the end of the harvest in autumn. However, this was not the Mid-Autumn Festival, during which the Chinese gathered with family to worship the Moon. In the Classic of Poetry, a poem written during the Western Zhou period (1046 BC – 771 BC) by an anonymous farmer, described the traditions of celebrating the 10th month of the ancient solar calendar, which was in autumn. The poem describes people cleaning millet stacks, offering mijiu (rice wine) to guests, slaughtering lambs, visiting their master's home, toasting him, and expressing wishes for longevity together. The 10th month celebration is believed to be one of the prototypes of Chinese New Year. The records of the first Chinese New Year celebration can be traced to the Warring States period (475 – 221 BC). In the Lüshi Chunqiu, in the Qin state, an exorcism ritual to expel illness, called "Big Nuo", was recorded as being carried out on the last day of the year. Later, Qin unified China, and the Qin dynasty was founded; and the ritual spread. It evolved into the practice of cleaning one's house thoroughly in the days preceding the Chinese New Year.

The first mention of celebrating the start of a new year was recorded during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD). In the book Simin Yueling (四民月令), written by the Eastern Han agronomist Cui Shi (崔寔), such a celebration was described: "The starting day of the first month is called Zheng Ri. I bring my wife and children to worship ancestors and commemorate my father." Later, he wrote: "Children, wife, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren all serve pepper wine to their parents, make their toast, and wish their parents good health. It's a thriving view." The practice of worshipping ancestors on New Year's Eve is maintained by Chinese people to this day.

Han Chinese also started the custom of visiting acquaintances' homes and wishing each other a happy new year. In Book of the Later Han, volume 27, a county officer was recorded as going to his prefect's house with a government secretary, toasting the prefect, and praising the prefect's merit.

During the Jin dynasty (266–420), people started the New Year's Eve tradition of all-night revelry called shousui (守歲). It was described in an article by Zhou Chu, a general of the Western Jin, Fengtu Ji (風土記, "Notes on Local Conditions"): "At the ending of a year, people gift and wish each other, calling it Kuisui (饋歲, 'time for gifts'); people invited others with drinks and food, calling it Biesui (別歲, 'sending off the year'); on New Year's Eve, people stayed up all night until sunrise, calling it Shousui (守歲, 'guard the year')." The article used the phrase chuxi (除夕) to indicate New Year's Eve—a phrase still used today.