Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is coming soon, and this year it falls in February. There are fifteen days to celebrate Chinese New Year. There are so many things to prepare and do for the New Year. Let me explain to you a few Chinese traditions on New Year.

First, we need to get new clothing; prepare lucky envelopes filled with money, plan the New Year's Eve Family Dinner, buy fire crackers to welcome the wealth god. There is a parade and street festival and, mainly, feasting.

There are many things we need to do before welcoming the New Year. First, cleaning the house two days before New Year is a way of saying that you sweep all unlucky or bad things out from your house. You should also clean all the bed sheets. We need to welcome the New Year with everything in the house clean and new because on New Year's Day, the Wealth God will come and visit every family hoping that he can leave some luck and wealth behind. Anyway, people say that there is a Wealth God (Choy Sun Yah), and well, it has been passed on for many generations and Chinese believe there is a Wealth God and he is watching.

Secondly, on New Year's Eve, all family members are expected to show up for dinner because it is a tradition. On that day, our parents will hand out red envelops to all the children. My mother will cook a big dinner with lots of food and especially chicken and fish because they represent that all children are well fed.

My mother will give me new clothes to wear and I will take a long bath. We need to take a long bath because we need to clean all of our unlucky things that have happened in the past yearand welcome the New Year with good fortune. On New Year's Day, we are not allowed to take a bath or wash our hair because we might wash away our luck and fortune.

There are many activities on New Year's Eve. There are dragon dances with music, street festivals with many different kinds of flowers and many different kinds of Chinese food. People dress in red clothes and basically everything is in red. Red, in Chinese, means lucky.

Dragon Dances and Fire Works are to welcome the New Year and Wealth God. The most exciting activity is gambling. People will gather around and play Mahjong, play cards or other games. People will gamble and stay up the whole night.

On New Year's Day, in some parts of China, people don't eat meat in the morning and afternoon.

In my family, we fast on New Year's Day until dinner. We eat lettuce, rice, peanuts and, most important, the vegetable call "Fat Choy." Fat Choy is something black and looks like hair but the meaning to this vegetable is "Rich". There is a saying that, the more you eat Fat Choy, the richer you will get. Anyhow, I don't believe it but it is a saying and has been passed on for many generations.

We are not allowed to sweep the floor or break anything because it is bad luck. There is also another saying that if you sweep the floor on New Year's Day, you might sweep away your fortune and luck.

Anyhow, on New Year's Day. our relatives will come to our house with presents and red envelops to hand out to children. And in return, we have to do the same. We will give them back some presents and red envelopes. It is a tradition that married people, parents, and elderly give out red envelopes to children and unmarried people. Before receiving the red envelope, you have to say nice things to them; such as “Kung Hay, Fat Choy”, wish them wealth and health throughout the year, or wish them a safe and happy New Year and anything that you can come up with that is good.

In conclusion, children can not wait for New Year to come because they are expecting to receive a lot of red envelopes. Chinese New Year is a big thing in China and people celebrate New Year all night long. Unfortunately for me, I am married and have children, therefore, I have to prepare red envelopes. “Kung Hay Fat Choy” is a very common term Chinese people say on Chinese New Year.