Archive for category Chinese Customs
Spring Festival
Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival or Chinese Lunar New Year, is the most important traditional festival in China. Its history can date back to the Shang Dynasty (1600BC – 1100BC).
The festival consists of a period of celebrations, starting on the first day of the first lunar month and ending with the Lantern Festival, the fifteenth day of the month. In Chinese culture, it is the most important festival for all the family members to get together.
Celebration
Sweeping of the Grounds
For the preparation for the New Year, every corner of the house must be swept and cleaned ten days before the New Year Day.
Spring Couplets
Spring Couplets represent best wishes and fortune for the coming year. They will be posted on the front doors in the month before the New Year’s Day, and often stay up for two months.
Reunion Dinner
All the family members will get together to have dinner on the New Year’s Eve.
Lantern Festival
The Lantern Festival falls on the 15th day of the first lunar month.
Food
In Chinese culture, there are many foods related with this festival, for example, Niangao, Jiaozi, Fagao, Yusheng, etc.
Ancient Chinese Wedding Custom – The Wedding
Posted by sharon in Wedding Traditions on February 4th, 2010
Compared with the complicated preparations, the wedding ceremony was quite simple. The newlyweds were conducted to the family altar, where they had to kneel three times. First, they would kneel to the heaven and the earth, then to the ancestral tablets and their parents and at last they would kneel to each other. This official ritual was equal to the wedding vow in western wedding.
In some regions, the bride and the groom would be conducted to their bridal chamber. However, in some regions, the bride would present tea to the groom’s parents and relatives in sequence of seniority. The newlyweds would receive money which was wrapped in red envelopes from people who received the tea.
Dongzhi Festival
The Dongzhi Festival, also called Winter Solstice Festival, is one of the most important traditional festivals in China. It is a solar term in Chinese lunar calendar and in the solar calendar, it always falls on December 22 or 23 each year.
As early as more than 2500 years ago, winter solstice was mensurated by Chinese via observing movements of the sun with sundials. During the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), it became a festival of great importance for the Chinese people. On that day, all the family members would get together and have meal together. Ancient Chinese also regarded this day as a day to offer scarifies to heaven and their ancestors.
In the southern parts of China, all the family members would make and eat Tangyuan, a kind of stuffed dumpling ball which is made of glutinous rice flour, symbolizing reunion in the Chinese culture. In some parts of the northern China, people would eat dumplings, believing that doing so would keep them from frost in the upcoming winter.
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