The biggest journey on Earth
Lunar New Year starts with the new moon that falls between 21 January and 20 February, and in China it is called the SPRING FESTIVAL. It is the most important holiday of the year, and hundreds of millions of people travel home for the REUNION dinner with their families on New Year's Eve. The travel season around it, called chunyun, is often described as the largest yearly human migration on the planet, with billions of journeys by train, road and air over about forty days.
The festival is celebrated across East and South-east Asia, as Tết in Vietnam and Seollal in Korea, and in Chinese communities around the world, and it ends with the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day, when a glowing LANTERN is hung outside homes and temples.
A monster that hated red
A legend tells of Nian, a monster that came out at the new year to eat crops, livestock and even people. The villagers discovered that it was frightened of loud noises, fire and the colour red. So people began hanging red decorations, lighting fires and setting off firecrackers, and the monster stayed away. Today a FIREWORK display or a string of firecrackers still greets the new year, and red is everywhere.
Red paper ENVELOPE gifts of money, called hongbao, are given by older relatives to children for LUCKY new starts. Since 2014 billions have also been sent digitally through messaging apps. Before the new year, homes are swept clean, but on New Year's Day itself many families avoid sweeping at all, in case they sweep their good FORTUNE out of the door.
The great race of the zodiac
Each year belongs to one of twelve animals in the Chinese ZODIAC. A popular folk tale says the Jade Emperor held a race across a river to decide their order. The rat hitched a ride on the ox's back and jumped off at the last moment to win, so the OX came second, then the TIGER, the RABBIT, the DRAGON, the snake, the horse, the goat, the monkey, the ROOSTER, the dog and the pig. The cat, the story goes, never took part, because the rat forgot to wake it, and cats and rats have been enemies ever since.
In Vietnam, the cat does have a place: the Vietnamese zodiac has a cat instead of the rabbit. Our Chinese mythology page covers the Jade Emperor and his court.
Lions, dragons and tangerines
A LION DANCE is performed by two dancers inside one costume, one working the head and one the back legs, often leaping onto poles, while a DRAGON dance needs a whole team holding the long body up on poles, rippling it through the streets in a PARADE. Both are meant to scare away bad luck and bring PROSPERITY.
Many foods are chosen because their names sound like lucky words. In Cantonese, the word for TANGERINE sounds like the word for luck, and the golden MANDARIN orange stands for gold, so bowls of them are given as gifts. Northern families fold a DUMPLING for every guest, as our Chinese food page explains. A New Year BANQUET and a warm GREETING wish everyone a good year ahead.