Fast Festival Facts

1. Spring Couplets (chun lian)

Spring couplets are pasted on each side of the front door and propitious words across the lintel at the top. In old China, scholars accomplished in the art of writing would set up the tools of their trade in their studio "brush, ink, inkstone and paper" and compose auspicious couplets for friends, relatives and the public at large.

Today couplets are mostly sold in shops and department stores. The traditional day to put on spring couplets is two days before the Chinese New Year's Day.

2. Reunion (tuan yuan)

New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are celebrated as a family affair, a time of reunion and thanksgiving. No matter how far the family members are apart, they are supposed to get together to celebrate.

People who have to work on these two days, for example military persons, police, overseas Chinese and doctors, are the highlight of Chinese media reports and like Westerners at Christmas, need to be comforted.

3. Eating Jiaozi (chi jiaozi)

The most popular New Year dish made in family kitchens are small meat dumplings called jiaozi. It is regarded as great fun for the whole family to get together and make jiaozi.

4. Auspicious Character (fu)

The character "fu", meaning "good fortune", is everywhere during the festival. On the doors of shops and families and even in rooms, people like to paste high the "fu" character, calligraphed on red paper.

It is hung reversed, in Chinese meaning "the fortune comes" (fu dao le), pronounced same as in "good fortune reversed".

5. Song and Dance(yang ge)

The most popular folksong and dance production, meaning "rice-sprout songs". The name suggests that this tradition originated with farmers, who sang songs as they transplanted young rice sprouts in the fields.

The invigorating performances of dynamic and lusty yang ge song and dance acts were directed to the dead to show fertility, fortune, and reproductive energy, and by this means receive their assistance to ensure prosperous times ahead.

6. Dragon Dance

The dragon dance appears usually once a year, on the last day of the Lantern Festival. Dozens of people are needed to carry the imposing wily serpent that stretches for at least 20 or 30 feet. It is constructed of bamboo rods and satiny cloth in sections of three or four feet and was traditionally illuminated by candles. Each "limb" is on a pole carried by one person who, together with the other participants, manipulates the dragon, making it sweep and wind gracefully though the streets.

The dragon symbolizes of vigor, fertility and spring rain, and was also an imperial emblem from the Han Dynasty onward. It is a composite creature described as having the head of camel, horns of a deer, eyes of a rabbit, ears of a cow, neck of a serpent, belly of a frog, scales of a carp, and talons of a hawk, it seems to express the life force by being a powerful summation of all these animals.