History of Chinese New Year: Lunar New Year

Chinese New Year: The Year of the Fire Horse. Image: BBC

HISTORY OF THE CHINESE NEW YEAR

Chinese New Year is China’s oldest, longest, and most important social and economic holiday. Chinese New Year begins on the first day of the Chinese lunisolar calendar.

It starts this year on February 17, though the celebrations continue for around two weeks. Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, concludes with the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month of the Chinese calendar. Chinese New Year’s Eve is tonight on February 16.

It is celebrated across China as a national holiday and in many other parts of Asia with people of Chinese descent. About 20-25% of the planet observes this holiday. In the West, it roughly corresponds to the end of the winter season and the beginning of Carnival.

Global Migration for Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is the largest annual human migration in the world. More than 400 million people are expected to travel during the holiday period, half that number in the Chinese mainland, almost four times as many as during the U.S. holiday season.

The Chunyun period, or the Spring Festival travel season, typically starts 15 days before Lunar New Year’s Day and can last for 40 days. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, with cross-country travel, 3 billion trips were taken. In 2023, it was 1.6 billion trips. This year, passenger trips are expected to reach a new record of 9.5 billion during the 40-day travel peak, exceeding even pre-pandemic levels.

Migration: Chinese New Year vs. Thanksgiving. Ref: Statista

Date of Chinese New Year

The Chinese lunisolar calendar, which dates back to the Shang Dynasty in the 14th century B.C., differs from the Western Gregorian calendar. This festival begins with the New Moon, typically the second new moon after the Winter Solstice, and can occur between January 21 and February 20. The lunar cycle is approximately 29.5 days, so the Chinese insert an interstitial month seven years out of a 19-year cycle to synchronize with the solar calendar.

Each year, the holiday begins on a different calendar date. Julius Caesar reformed the calendar to set the New Year on January 1 over two millennia ago. The Chinese general population didn’t begin officially celebrating New Year’s Day until 1912, though the celebration goes back three to four thousand years.

Temporary Halt of Chinese New Year

After Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949, they banned traditional New Year celebrations. His Cultural Revolution between 1966 and his death in 1976 was intended to eliminate “bourgeois elements” like capitalism, religion, and traditional customs. Following Mao’s death, Lunar New Year festivals were reinstated in 1980, and the holiday was designated a weeklong public holiday in 1996.

The Legend

Lion Dance, Colorado Springs

The legend persists that Nian, a mythical beast who lived under the sea or in the mountains, would terrorize children and farm animals. The name means “year” or “new year.”

The beast feared the color red and loud noises, so red lanterns and fireworks were used to drive the beast away. Some attribute the popular Chinese lion dance to the Nian legend.

Chinese New Year Practices

This festival features many distinctive Chinese cultural elements, including cuisine, art, and martial arts exhibitions. For example, in my town of Colorado Springs, several martial arts dojos, including mine, have performed at the City Auditorium.

Tai Chi White Tiger bo staff

Tai Chi Qigong

In these pictures, I demonstrate a Chinese Tai Chi Qigong exercise (left) and the White Tiger bo staff form (right).

Other customs of Chinese New Year include red clothes, poems on red paper, and lucky money in red envelopes. Red signifies fire, which is believed to drive away bad luck, and fireworks add to the festivities.

The celebration usually starts with a dragon dance. I’ve seen these in Hong Kong, featuring a dragon of silk, paper, and bamboo that is a hundred feet long, winding through the streets atop Victoria Peak, held aloft by young men. The lion dance is also an exciting display, with two people animating the colorful animal.

Lion Dance, Victoria Peak, Hong Kong

Chinese New Year Food

Enjoying dim sum on Victoria Peak above Hong Kong

The food includes dumplings, spring rolls, niangao (glutinous rice cakes), fish, and fruit. Dumplings – dim sum – represent wealth; it is believed that the more you eat, the more money you will make in the new year. One is supposed to eat dumplings for every meal, every day of the festival, technically. Most eat dumplings for the New Year’s Eve dinner or for the first breakfast.

Family reunion meals are held throughout the festival, typically beginning with a New Year’s Eve meal. The festival concludes with the Lantern Festival, which may feature lanterns adorned with Chinese zodiac symbols, flowers, animals, and birds. Lighted candles are carried to an evening parade along with the light of the full moon.

Chinese New Year and Business

Businesses in China typically take the first week of the Spring Festival off as a public holiday, and people travel to visit friends and family to celebrate the New Year. Chinese New Year is important across Asia, particularly in countries with large Chinese populations or those influenced by Han Dynasty culture. This includes Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, and companies will take at least one or two days off.

Popularity of Chinese New Year

With the spread of Chinese immigration, the festival was celebrated in other parts of the world, especially in cities that developed Chinatowns. The largest celebration outside of Asia is in San Francisco. The Gold Rush of 1849 brought Chinese workers to the mines and the railroads. As Chinese families were away from their families, their local communities served as the basis for their celebrations, dating back to the 1860s, including a parade in San Francisco.

Baidu Map of Chinese New Year travel. Image: CNN

Chinese search company Baidu launched a Chinese New Year migration map that is updated hourly for 8 hours daily, showing the most popular migration routes.

This analysis is based on the five billion positioning requests sent to Baidu’s LBS Open Platform via its products, including Baidu Maps and other apps that use its positioning technology and services.

Singapore, which has a high percentage of Chinese people, agreed with China on a “mutual visa exemption,” effective February 9, 2024 – the eve of the start of Chinese New Year. For 30 days, any ordinary passport holder of either country can enter the other country without special visa requirements for activities including tourism.

Chinese Immigration to the U.S.

I’ve worked for large Silicon Valley companies that employ many Chinese who celebrate Chinese New Year with a Chinese meal. One can appreciate the large Chinese immigrant populations along the Pacific Coast of America. But here in Colorado, it was the building of the Transcontinental Roadroad system that brought Chinese workers in 1865 to build the Central Pacific Railroad across to Nevada and California.

Burlingame Treaty. Image Foreign Affairs

Following the Burlingame Treaty of 1868, which granted China favored-nation status, the Chinese immigrant population grew to over 11,000 in 1868 and almost 15,000 in 1869. The Central Pacific employed more than 12,000 Chinese laborers, accounting for more than 90% of its workforce. Consequently, there was a sizable Chinese population in the American West. We celebrate Chinese New Year in the major Colorado cities of Denver, Boulder, and Colorado Springs.

Chinese New Year Statistics

Here are some stats to impress friends and family:

• No. 1: largest human migration in the world
• No. 1: most significant usage of fireworks on the planet. China produces 90% of the world’s fireworks
• 2 billion people celebrate this holiday
• 226 million domestic trips took place for the holiday in China in 2023, compared to a pandemic-low of 98 million in 2021
• 2nd day of the festival: is believed to be the birthday of all dogs, and people should be extra kind to dogs then.
• 1/4th: of the world’s population celebrates this holiday
• 4.5 billion: Journeys are made as people return to their homes
• 7 days: The typical amount of time people get off for the holiday
• 8 billion: red envelopes will be passed out to children and single young relatives, some electronically
• 19 billion: texts were sent on the holiday in 2009, a world record
• 163 million: Chinese attend the cinema. Domestic comedies account for over 97%
• Everyone: grows a year older in China with the New Year, no matter when you were born
• $88B: revenue generated by tourist income in 2024, surpassing pre-COVID numbers
• 800 million: viewers of the Spring Festival Eve TV gala, the most-watched entertainment show in the world. Since 1983, it has been the family ritual to watch this cultural variety show, like the Ed Sullivan Show was in the U.S. in the 1960s

Guo Nian Hao… happy new year.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com

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