中国文化 6.Traditional Chinese Festivals.pptVIP

Traditional Chinese Festivals Spring Festival The first day of the first lunar month is regarded as the New Year of the Chinese – the Spring Festival. It starts every year in the early days of the 12th lunar month and will last till the mid 1st lunar month of the next year. Spring Festival It originated in the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC- 1046 BC) from the people’s sacrifice to gods and ancestors at the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one. Nowadays, this superstitious meaning has faded away and is replaced with a symbol of unification, happiness and hope. The Spring Festival is the most important and ceremonious traditional festival in China, just as Christmas Day to the westerners. Customs On the 8th day of the 12th lunar month, many families make laba porridge, a delicious kind of porridge made with local specialties such as beans, dates, peanuts, walnuts, gingko, lotus seeds in addition to rice, cooked with sugar to make the porridge wonderfully sweet. Customs Customs Before the New Year comes, the people are busy with cleaning the indoors and outdoors of their homes in the hope of getting rid of defilements and preventing diseases. People paste door-god, spring festival couplets, and the reversed Chinese character “福” (meaning blessing or happiness), and red paper-cuttings in the hope of praying for auspiciousness in the New Year. Customs On the New Year’s Eve, people working far away from home will manage to come back, regardless of long-distance travel, so the “Grand Dinner on New Year’s Eve” is also called “Family Reunion Dinner”. At twelve o’clock, when a new year drives off the old, every family will shoot off firecrackers to greet new days and send off old ones. On the New Year’s Eve, almost every family stays up late or all night. Customs The CCTV New Year’s Gala is a Chinese New Year special produced by China Central Television. Boasting a yearly viewership of over 700 million viewers, the show features various acts, such as drama, danc