How is the Chinese New Year celebrated?

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is the marking of the start of a new year. This celebration begins on the new moon and ends on the full moon fifteen days later. It is celebrated with special meals, gift giving and visits to family and friends.

During this celebration people prepare traditional foods such as egg rolls, noodles and shrimp. These different traditional dishes also have their own meaning. The egg rolls symbolise wealth for the upcoming year because they look like bars of gold. The noodles represent a healthy and long life, as long as you don’t cut them. The shrimps mean happiness because in Mandarin shrimp has a close meaning to smile.

Throughout Chinese New Year, you will see decorations that contain the colors red and gold. The meaning behind the red is happiness, because it was the color that was used to defeat the monster Nian. They use these colors on a lot of their decorations such as banners, flags and envelopes. These red envelopes (Hong Bao) are given to children and unmarried adults to give them good fortune and luck.

Chinese New Year celebrations end with a lantern festival and parade lead by dancing dragons and lions. This is because Chinese people use traditional dances to recreate and tell stories. In their dances they use different animals and creatures such as dragons and lions. All of the traditional dances have played a part in their history.

The Chinese New Year is the marking of the start of a new year and brings family and
friends across the world together, to celebrate good fortune.

Today, I wrote an explanation about Chinese New Year. Did you know that this year is

the year of the dog.