Student's Times 2014-2018 2015/17/02 Páté číslo | Page 8

Chinese New Year
Although we celebrated the New Year before more than one month ago, in some eastern countries such as
China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand the New
year is celebrated on a different date and in a different way.
I’m talking about the CHINESE NEW YEAR - it is also called the Lunar New Year or the Spring Festival and it’s
the most important traditional Chinese holiday (festival).
It begins on the first day of Chinese calendar and it ends with the Lantern Festival. The celebrating of the
Chinese New Year takes 15 days and the Chinese New Year’s Eve is called chú xī (= Year-pass Eve).

Chinese New Year is a reflection on how people behaved
and what they believed in the past
The Chinese years have 12-year cycle and each year is dedicated to one of 12 china zodiac signs. The cycle
begins with the sign of the Rat and ends with the Pig.
(There are several legends about the order of the animals and most known is the one that says that those 12
animals went to visit Buddha for his birthday and a rat came as the first, than ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake,
horse, sheep, monkey rooster, dog and the last one was the Pig)
In China people also distinguish 5 elements: Fire, Watter, Earth, Wood and Metal. Because of this there are 60
different possibilities of the year signs, it is also a combination of a zodiac and an element.

This year is the Year of Sheep, and the element is Wood
This year the celebration of the New Year begins on the 19 th of February.
The habits and traditions are a little bit different in each country, family and religion. But the main signs are
maintained.

The RED COLOUR
With the beginning of the Chinese New Year people decorate their houses with red lanterns, paper-cuts and
couplets. They also give the red envelopes to their children, grandchildren, relatives or even bosses to their
employees. In this envelope is a coin that is supposed to bring you fortune in the new year.
The red colour has a reason. There is a story about a beast called Nien which used to appear every New Year
and tortured the people by eating their livestock, crops or even children and sometimes adults. At first people
tried to give the food outside the door every New Year so the beast can feed on it and wouldn’t torture them
as it used to do. It worked. But what was better? One kid went out of the house on the New Year, which was
dangerous and nobody did that, once the beast saw that kid, it escaped. Lately those villagers found out that
it was caused by the red clothes, so they found out that the beast is afraid of the red colour.