The legend story of Chinese Lunar New Year
Chinese Lunar New Year
“Chinese lunar new year”is “Spring Festival”
Chinese will begin the Chinese lunar new year, same as the spring festival on Feb. 12 (Friday) 2021. It is the first day of the first month of the lunar Chinese calendar. Chinese people will celebrate the spring festival in various traditional ways, such as, lion dances, dragon dances, fireworks, family gathering, family reunion dinner, visiting friends and relatives, giving red envelopes, decorating with chunlian couplets, etc.
The literal meaning “Chinese lunar new year”is “Spring Festival”. The traditional Chinese character 春節 is used in HK, Taiwan and Macau. The simplified Chinese 春节 is used in the mainland China.
Do you know how the Chinese lunar new year started?
Let me share with you one legend story.
According to tales and legends, the beginning of the Chinese New Year started with a mythical beast called the Nian, 年 is a beast that lives under the sea or in the mountains, during the annual Spring Festival. The Nian would eat villagers, especially children in the middle of the night. One year, all the villagers decided to go hide from the beast. An old man, appeared before the villagers went into hiding and said that he would stay the night, and would get revenge on the Nian. All the villagers thought he was insane. The old man put red papers up and set off firecrackers. The day after, the villagers came back to their town and saw that nothing had been destroyed. They assumed that the old man was a deity 神who came to save them. The villagers then understood that Yanhuang had discovered that the Nian was afraid of the color red and loud noises. So the tradition grew that when New Year was approaching, the villagers would wear red clothes, hang red lanterns, and red spring scrolls on windows and doors. People also used firecrackers to frighten away the Nian. From then on, Nian never came to the village again. That is why the Chinese started to celebrate the spring festival every yea
Author Profile
