Chinese New Year

By Ben



Chinese New Year is a big festival in China. Chinese New Year is also called Nian. It celebrates the new start of next year. And why do we call it Nian? There is a legend about this: at the beginning of the first month of each year, the monster called Nian would come down from the mountains to hurt villagers. To defeat this monster, they would beat drums and gongs, burn bamboo and light fireworks to scare it away. So the Chinese New Year is called Nian.

At Chinese New Year, people do many things. First, people will clean their home because the people believe that if the home is dirty when the New Year arrives, the bad luck from last year will carry forward.




Second, people will get together for a dinner on the eve of Chinese New Year.

Third, everyone will dress in new clothes and visit their relatives' and friends' home. The children look forward to receiving "red packets" and these are given to the children and adults who are not married. These "red packets" have some money inside and represent good fortune for the next year. The children are very happy to receive the red packets.

Finally, the tradition in New Year is the Lion Dance. Sometimes there is a Dragon Dance too. The Dance goes with beating drums and gongs. People believe that it will bring good luck to them. So Lion Dance is very important part of Chinese New Year. Those are the things people will do in Chinese New Year.

The Chinese New Year's Eve dinner is very large and traditional. The people will eat fish, chicken, noodles, and dumplings, etc. However, the fish used in dinner must be a whole fish, to represent togetherness and abundance. The chicken must be with a head, tail, and feet, to represent completeness. The noodles should be uncut, to represent long life. And "dumpling" in Chinese sounds like "get together." People are particular about New Year’s food.

Before the New Year, people will decorate their home. They will paste up some “Fai Chun” and the Fai Chun is writing about the Auspicious Messages. During the New Year, you can always hear the people say "KUNG HEI FAT CHOI." It means "hope you can become rich." Of course, you still can hear many auspicious messages during the New Year.

In conclusion, Chinese New Year is a very good traditional festival. You can see the friends or relatives you didn’t see for long time. Everybody gets together to see the Lion Dance and have dinner. The adults make the plans for the next year. The children receive the red packets. And at New Year, you can have many kinds of food. So I like Chinese New Year very much!