Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival in China

 Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival in China

"2025 The Year of the Snake is all about shedding 

that bad energy." NBC News (See Annex below)

Researched and Compiled by Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature - School on Blog 

Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air) 

with Ms Melly C Tenorio, 738 DZRB AM, evening class 8 to 9, Monday to Friday 

It is China’s most important traditional festival. It is also the most important celebration for families, and a week of official public holiday.

Chinese New Year 2025 is on Wednesday 29 of January. 

The date of Chinese New Year is based on the Chinese lunar calendar not the Gregorian calendar, but is always somewhere in the period from January 21 to February 20. Chinese New Year — Joint Longest Public Holiday in China

Lion Dance

What are the Chinese new year animals? The Chinese lunar calendar is associated with the Chinese zodiac, which has 12 animal signs: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, Rooster, dog, and pig. Each animal represents a year in a 12-year cycle, beginning on Chinese New Year's Day. Year 2025 is year of the wood snake. 2015 is a year of the goat.  2016 is a year of the Monkey according to the Chinese 12-year animal zodiac cycle. Other Monkey years include: …1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004… If you were born then you’re a Monkey. Each Chinese zodiac year begins on Chinese New Year's Day. Monkey years are believed to be the most unlucky for people born in a year of the Monkey.In 2016, most Chinese will be off work 7 days from Sunday, February 7 (New Year's Eve) to Saturday, February 13 (Chinese New Year day 6). China Highlights’ office will be closed during this period, and we will be back at work on Sunday, February 14, (The other 7-day public holiday is National Day holiday.)

Why Do People Celebrate Chinese New Year? Although there are many interesting legends and stories explaining the start of the Chinese New Year festival, the main two reasons for the festival are: To celebrate a year of hard work, have a good rest, and relax with family and to wish for a lucky and prosperous coming year Chinese people believe that a good start to the year will lead to a lucky year. Chinese traditionally celebrated the start of a new year of farm work, and wished for a good harvest (when most were farmers). This has now evolved to celebrating the start of a new business year and wishing for profits and success in various vocations. 

How Do the Chinese Celebrate the Festival

The main traditional celebrations of the festival include eating reunion dinner with family, giving red envelopes, firecrackers, new clothes, and decorations. More modern celebrations include watching the CCTV Gala, instant message greetings, and cyber money gifts.

A Festival for Family – Chinese get together and enjoy family time. Chinese New Year's Reunion Dinner. Chinese New Year is a time for families to be together. Wherever they are, people come home to celebrate the festival with their families. The New Year's Eve dinner is called "reunion dinner", and is believed to be the most important meal of the year. Big families of several generations sit around round tables and enjoy the food and time together.

Decorating Buildings, Houses, and Streets with Lucky Red Items

Every street, building, and house where CNY is celebrated is decorated with red. Red is the main color for the festival, as it is believed to be an auspicious color. Red lanterns hang in streets; red couplets are pasted on doors; banks and official buildings are decorated with red New Year pictures depicting images of prosperity. Most of the decoration is traditionally done on Chinese New Year’s Eve. As 2016 is the year of monkey, decorations related to monkeys will be commonly seen. There are red monkey dolls for children and New Year paintings with monkeys on.

Many cultural activities are arranged during the festival. Rural areas and small towns retain more traditional celebrations than the cities, such as setting off firecrackers, ancestor worship, and dragon dances. Setting off fireworks is common during the Spring Festival season all over China.

At temple fairs in many Chinese cities traditional performances can be seen: dragon dances, lion dances, and imperial performances like an emperor's wedding. A great variety of traditional Chinese products are on offer there, and strange Chinese snacks, rarely seen the rest of the year. Beijing's temple fairs are held in parks from the first day of the lunar year to the Lantern Festival. In North China people perform various versions of the Rice Sprout Song, a traditional Chinese dance performed by a group of colorfully-dressed women and men.

Giving Red Envelopes to Pass On Best Wishes Giving red envelops or Hongbao is a custom at Chinese New Year  Like Christmas in the West, people exchange gifts during the Spring Festival. The most common gifts are red envelopes. Red envelopes have money in, and are given to children and (retired) seniors. It is not a customs to give red envelopes to (working) adults, except by employers. Red envelopes are used in the hope of giving good luck (as well as money) to the receivers.

Eating Lucky Foods for Increased Luck in the Year Ahead Certain foods are eaten during the festival (especially at the New Year’s Eve dinner) because of their symbolic meanings, based on their names or appearances. Fish is a must for Chinese New Year as the Chinese word for fish sounds like the word for surplus. Eating fish is believed to bring a surplus of money and good luck in the coming year. Other Chinese New Year foods include dumplings, spring rolls, glutinous rice cakes, and sweet rice balls.

Setting off Firecrackers — "Goodbye Old Year; Welcome New Year!" It has long been a Chinese tradition to set off firecrackers when the New Year clock strikes. The tradition is to set off one string of small firecrackers first, followed by three big firecrackers, which symbolize "sounding out" the old year and "sounding in" the new year. The louder the three firecrackers, the better and luckier it’s believed it will be for business and farming in the coming year.

Praying in a Temple to Receive a Year-Long Blessing Praying in a temple during Chinese New Year is said to be a particularly blessed activity, and will lead to a smooth coming year. In Shanghai, China's biggest city, thousands flock to Longhua Temple, the city's biggest temple, to pray for good fortune.

Things You Must/Mustn’t Do to Avoid a Year of Bad Luck As Chinese people believe that the year’s start affects the whole year, are many superstitions and taboos for the Spring Festival season. These taboos usually apply up to a month before the festival and continue to the end of the festival (day 15, the Lantern Festival).

• Some Chinese people believe that they mustn't do cleaning or wash their hair in the first three days as that will sweep/wash away good luck.
• A cry of a child is believed to bring bad luck to the family, so the young are placated fastidiously.
• No begging: To ask for a loan is a big "no-no".
• Another interesting thing is the red underwear…

You will see red underwear sold at supermarkets and street markets. Red is believed to ward off bad luck and misfortune. For people born in a year of the Monkey, red underwear is a must for 2016!

Chinese New Year Now — Modern CNY Activities  Chinese New Year celebrations and activities are changing. A change in attitude to the festival has occurred especially among China’s younger generation. Most young people prefer surfing the Internet, playing with smart phones, and sleepovers or spending time with friends to celebrating with their extended families.  Greeting Each Other on Devices  Sending cell phone messages had become the main way to greet people on Chinese New Year's Eve this decade. In the past people sent New Year cards or called each other to express their good wishes during the Spring Festival.

Now more people use instant messages on WeChat (the most popular social media app in China, like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger in the West) to greet their friends. App-sent/received "red envelopes" appeared in 2015, and they soon become the most popular New Year activity among the young. Many young people spend most of their 2015 New Year holiday time exchanging cyber money via red envelope apps for fun.

Tough Time for "Old" Singles — Solution: Fake Boy/Girlfriend Rental! Chinese new year is a tough time for "old" singles Chinese New Year is a joyful time for most, but for singles above the normal matrimonial age it is not so. Parents and relatives think they should be settled down. In China, females are said to be marriageable up to 30, and males before 32. Those who don't get married before these ages are thought to be the dregs of society!

For these singles, parents are extremely anxious. So New Year's Eve stress is heighted by embarrassing interrogations of the singles. Desperate parents even arrange dating (prospective marriages) for their single children.

To solve this problem an interesting, and often ridiculous, solution has appeared — renting a boyfriend or girlfriend for the New Year. There are websites and agents specialized in this business. Taobao, China's largest online retailer, has a section for fake boyfriend and girlfriend rentals. The price is about 100 yuan (16 USD) a day.

100s of Millions on the Move — CNY Traffic Chaos The Chinese New Year period is a good time to visit China if you are interested in traditional Chinese culture. But you should be prepared for travel chaos and transport stress around China.

It seems the whole nation is on the move during the festival. The festival is the busiest travel season in the world, when trains and buses are fully packed. Even flight tickets can be hard to get. Chinese people do whatever they can to go home to see their families: from buying a ticket from scalpers at several times the price, to queuing for three days, to fighting for a ticket, to standing for more than 20 hours in an over-packed train, or riding a bus with 20 extra passengers on stools down the aisle for 12 hours or more. China's migrant workers are the main force during this migration. They carry large and heavy bags full of their worldly possessions and gifts, traveling generally from China's richer east coast back to their hometowns. ~

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ANNEX - School Reference

The Year of the Snake is all about shedding that bad energy

This Lunar New Year, the snake is expected to bring about transformation and new beginnings.

Justine Goode / NBC News; Getty Images

Jan. 29, 2025, 6:31 AM GMT+8 / Updated Jan. 29, 2025, 11:54 PM GMT+8
By Kimmy Yam

The Year of the Snake has started, and the vibes are all about renewal and regeneration.

Lunar New Year — which includes Chinese New Year, Seollal in Korea, Tet in Vietnam and more — begins on Jan. 29, kicking off more than two weeks of parties, customs and copious feasts.

The holiday, also known as the Spring Festival, celebrates the arrival of spring and the start of a fresh year based on the Chinese lunisolar calendar.

Though the snake may get a bad rap across many Western cultures, the animal is actually a celebrated and revered sign across the Eastern hemisphere. And its year is expected to be one of positive transformation as people slither into new beginnings — if they’re willing to move on.

It’s all about “shedding toxicity in personality, in character traits,” said Jonathan H. X. Lee, an Asian and Asian American studies professor at San Francisco State University whose research focuses in part on Chinese folklore.

“It’s shedding the ego, letting go of the past, letting go of anger, letting go of love lost,” Lee said. “This is the year where that kind of growth — personal and macro, internal and external — is very much possible.”

Lee said that the snake is an auspicious sign for inner work, whether it’s releasing unrealistic expectations of loved ones or getting rid of bad habits.

The snake, which matches up with the years of people born in 1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001, 2013 and 2025, is most commonly associated with intelligence, resilience and love, Lee said. And people born in those years are thought to do “whatever it takes to accomplish a goal.”

“They are known to have this innate potential to be really successful, because they can think outside the box, and they will endure and they will persevere,” Lee said.

More specifically, this year is that of the wood snake, with the wood element holding profound meaning across the three major organized Chinese religions. In Daoism, the wood is a sign of returning to one’s natural state or true nature, while in Confucianism it symbolizes becoming a more polished person. In Buddhism, it’s associated with letting go for growth.

The positive qualities attached to the snake are anchored in two folklore tales, Lee explained. In the story of the creation of the Chinese zodiac, the snake was once a four-legged, happy creature who became angry after other animals isolated him because of his appearance. Blaming the Jade Emperor for creating him that way, the snake’s anger morphed into physiological changes, like growing fangs, and prompted him to snap at the other creatures.

Word reached the Jade Emperor, who punished him by taking away his legs. The heavenly ruler promised that if the snake won a race competition against the other animals, which would eventually dictate the order of the zodiac, the snake could win a prize and potentially get his legs back. 

Lion Dragons in the annual Lunar New Year parade in New York City's Chinatown on Feb. 25. Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images file

Though the snake didn’t win, he placed sixth, impressing the emperor with his perseverance and dedication. The ruler made him one of the 12 animals of the zodiac. The race changed the snake’s path in other ways, too.

“He learned how to control that anger. But because that anger was a part of him for so long, he had the yearning to go out and harm and bite,” Lee said. “When that happened, he would stay isolated and … he would grow out of his old skin in order to let go of that past.” ~  For study reference only, acknowledgement with gratitude - avr