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This is the most important
traditional festival for the Chinese nation and overseas Chinese. In the narrow
sense, it is the first day of the Lunar New Year. In a broader sense, it refers
to the festival that occurs between the 23rd day of the last lunar month (the
day of Offerings to the Kitchen God) and the 15th day of the first lunar month
(the Lantern Festival). In a modern sense, Spring Festival is a mixture of the
beginning of the New Year and the Beginning of Spring on the lunar calendar.
During Spring Festival, people pay tribute to deities and their ancestors, post
auspicious couplets and New Year paintings, buy new year’s goods and put on new
clothes, have a family reunion dinner, give children gift money, stay up the
whole night on New Year's Eve to say goodbye to the departing year, set off
firecrackers and visit relatives and friends. In terms of family relationships
and religion, people make sacrifices to ancestors and deities for the
protection of their family members. In addition, Spring Festival reflects the
importance Chinese people attach to family reunion, harmony within a family and
kinship. When it comes to the Chinese people’s sense of life and sense of time,
they not only bid farewell to the departing year and express their welcome to
the new year, they also express their expectation for a better future. Through
the influence of Chinese culture, some of China’s neighboring countries also
celebrate Spring Festival.
In the literal sense, the Chinese character nian (年) means the ripening of crops. As crops are mostly harvested annually, the Chinese character nian has gradually come to refer to the period of one year, and later it is used to refer to the annual Spring Festival. When it comes to the calendar, it refers to the period of one year on the lunar calendar (lunisolar calendar), which has 12 months: 7 months each of 30 days and 5 months of 29 days, altogether 354 or 355 days. A leap year has 13 months, altogether 383 or 384 or 385 days a year. As a lunar calendar, it is closely related to agricultural production cycles in ancient China, and it epitomizes ancient Chinese people’s awareness of time and concept in an agrarian society. The Gregorian calendar from the West was adopted by the Republic of China in 1912, ushering in a dual system of lunar and solar calendars. As a result, nian (year) refers to a year on the solar or lunar calendar, depending on the context.
“The twenty-four solar terms” is a unique phenomenon on the traditional lunar calendar. To facilitate agricultural production, ancient Chinese people summarized a supplementary calendar that divides a year into 24 segments according to the sun’s movement on the ecliptic and seasonal changes in weather and other natural phenomena, with the 24 solar terms proportionally distributed through the 12 months. A solar term that starts in the early part of a month is called jie (节), and one that starts in the middle part of a month is called qi (气). (Every three years there would be a month which has only a jie without a qi, or a month which has only a qi without a jie, in which case a leap month would be added to regulate it.) The solar terms are so named that they represent the changes in season, phenology and climate. The eight solar terms that reflect seasonal changes are Beginning of Spring, Vernal Equinox, Beginning of Summer, Summer Solstice, Beginning of Autumn, Autumnal Equinox, Beginning of Winter and Winter Solstice; the four solar terms that represent phenological changes are Waking of Insects, Fresh Green, Lesser Fullness and Grain in Ear; and the 12 solar terms that indicate the changes in climate are Rain Water, Grain Rain, Lesser Heat, Greater Heat, End of Heat, White Dew, Cold Dew, First Frost, Light Snow, Heavy Snow, Lesser Cold and Greater Cold. First established in the Qin and Han dynasties, the 24 solar periods have not only facilitated agricultural production but also reflected Chinese people’s perception of time in the past more than two thousand years.
It is one of the four major traditional festivals, namely, the Spring Festival, Qingming Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-autumn Festival, that are celebrated by the Chinese. It is the only Chinese festival which occurs on one of the solar terms of the traditional calendar, usually on April 4, 5 or 6. Prior to the Tang Dynasty, Qingming functioned primarily as one of the 24 solar terms that reflected natural changes of seasons and were closely associated with timing of agricultural activities. After the Tang and Song dynasties, Qingming took the place of the Hanshi (“Cold Food”) Festival, and the practices of sweeping ancestral graves and eating cold food became prominent features of the Qingming Festival. At this time of year, with the coming of spring, all living things are bursting with vitality, and people go on country outings, plant willows, fly kites and play on swings. Today, Qingming has remained a festival of special significance to the Chinese. On May 20, 2006, it was put on the first list of national-level intangible cultural heritages by the Chinese government.
中华思想文化术语传播工程 秘书处
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