Lunar New Year is a festival beyond compare. Technically it’s a week—determined by the lunar calendar but always late January to mid-February—but for many, Chunjie (Spring Festival) is more like 40 days of celebrations. The travel involved has been called the largest annual human migration in the entire world. China holds 1.4 billion people (18.4 percent of the world’s total population, but who’s counting?) and every year, nearly three billion people fan across the country, returning to their hometowns. Here are 10 essential things to know about this massive, annual event.
Name that holiday
The holiday is not celebrated just in mainland China and Hong Kong. For Chinese people, Lunar New Year is the Spring Festival, and it’s celebrated widely in Taiwan and across Southeast Asia in countries with large Chinese populations, such as Singapore and Malaysia. In Korea, the Lunar New Year is called Seollal; in Vietnam, Tet; and in Tibet, Losar.
Say “Happy New Year!”
In Mandarin, they’ll say gong xi fa cai (恭喜发财), wishing you a prosperous New Year. In Cantonese, it’s gong hey fat choi. Still, if you wish someone xin nian kuai le (新年快乐), literally “Happy New Year,” that’s perfectly welcome, too.
Hear firecrackers popping
Leading up to and during the Spring Festival, the streets of Chinese cities used to sound like war zones, with firecrackers exploding all night. Following a big clampdown on people setting off their fireworks in urban areas, you’ll most likely only hear these sounds in smaller towns and the countryside. The firecrackers serve two purposes: One, they’re fun and celebratory; two, they were traditionally set off to scare away dragon-lion monster Nian—who, as legend has it, would attack villagers and sometimes eat children but could be frightened off by loud noises.
