New Year's News

New Year's customs: New Year's customs

1, Jiangsu Province

No Wuxi in addition to sticking peach charms, door filler, spring couplets, there are in the New Year hanging Zhong Kui elephant, to avoid a year of ghosts and spirits. Legend has it that Zhong Kui is good at catching ghosts. This custom probably began in the Tang Dynasty. Wuxi folk many people still hang on the lintel of the lintel of the red single statement and cut paper door paper hanging custom.

Wuxi region in the morning of New Year's Day, the prevalence of eating cake silk round son, take the meaning of reunion and high rise. The other also have to eat noodles, take long life, the meaning of spring. Wuxi custom in the New Year children come, the host will have to take refreshments candy hospitality gifts. Friends and relatives who have children come to pay tribute to the New Year should be rewarded with New Year's money. New son-in-law to the mother-in-law's home to pay tribute to the New Year, are generally selected at the beginning of the third. The third day of the year is called the small New Year's Day, can not sweep the ground, begging fire, draw water, and New Year's Day customs are the same.

Wuxi also has a custom that is slightly different from the rest, that is, where there are sixty, seventy, eighty birthday congratulations, are held in the Spring Festival, rather than on the birthday congratulations. New Year's Day many places have the custom of not being able to sweep the floor, Wuxi is the same. It is believed that sweeping the floor on the first day of the year should sweep away the wealth. On the second day of the year, even if you sweep the floor, you can not dump the garbage out of the door, but piled up in the corner of the house side, until the first half of the month, known as the "gathering of wealth".

Year-old custom to avoid begging people for fire, draw water, and do not move the knife and scissors, and prohibit the dumping of sewage, feces. New Year's Day when you go to sleep, but also to put two or three sound closing pops. Wuxi this night to sleep earlier, such as children playful refused to sleep, parents often coaxed the child said: "go to bed earlier, tonight to listen to the old bugs do pro".

2, Shandong Province

Kongfu New Year's Day

Kongfu New Year's Day has some different places from the folk

near thirty, the Kongfu busy New Year's Day activities in the most lively scene, "Steam Strong" on the emergence of "Steam Strong!

Nearing the 30th, the Kongfu busy year activities in the most lively scene "steam Zhuang" appeared, "steam Zhuang" is for the New Year steamed all kinds of steamed bread, dumplings, cakes. At this time, the "fire household" to burn the fire, steaming a variety of steamed buns.

Dumplings are wrapped throughout the night on New Year's Eve. Inside the house everywhere burning lamps, burning sandalwood incense, laying carpets, the yard to build a colorful tent, pulling colorful ribbons. In the afternoon, we go to the temple to perform rituals, and after dinner, we go to the ancestral temple to say goodbye to the New Year. Adults give children send "New Year's money", in a red paper bag, written on it "long life," the word, placed on the child's pillow, each person to prepare a cloisonné food box, in which to put sticky rice noodles made of Ruyi, small persimmons, oranges and other things.

New Year's Eve night Diffractive Shenggong also personally to Anhuaitang set up offerings, worship white-bearded old gods, it is said that all the spirits in the Confucian House of all the ghosts and monsters belong to this white-bearded old gods.

After midnight all the people get up to worship the gods of heaven and earth. In the courtyard of the front upper room, they set up a "heaven and earth building" with mats. In each direction, east, west, south, north, northeast, southwest and northwest, a table was set up on which the tablets of the gods were placed, and a table in the center was set up with the tablets of the gods of heaven and earth. "Heaven and earth building" next to the establishment of "heavenly pole", point "heavenly lamp", day and night, has been point to point half a month long.

Waking up on the morning of New Year's Day, we don't say anything, and we touch the things in the food box and the New Year's money with our hands. Wake up and worship temples, ancestral halls, and receive New Year's greetings from servants. The family comes to pay homage to the Confucius House. In the afternoon, the lion dance of the local "Dragon Lantern Society" performs in the Confucius Mansion, and the officials of the Confucius Mansion and the "flower gun households" set off fireworks to celebrate the New Year.

3, Zhejiang Province

Shaoxing New Year's Eve customs

In Shaoxing, a cross into the lunar calendar in December, people are busy preparing for New Year's Eve: buy wine, spring cake, wrapped in rice dumplings, dusting, killing chickens and geese, buy fish and meat, prepare for the New Year wearing clothes, shoes and hats, the purchase of gifts for friends and relatives, etc., can be said to be too busy to be able to do anything lest financing is not good enough, making jokes. On the night of the 23rd day of the Lunar New Year, every family should send the God of the Stove to heaven and offer a kind of sticky sugar to stick to the teeth of the God of the Stove, so that he can't tell the Jade Emperor about people's faults. After sending the Zaoshen, before New Year's Eve, each family always chooses a blessed auspicious day, and this is the most grand festival of the year for each family. The idol of the deity has the words "Saint Emperor of the Southern Dynasty", which is called the Bodhisattva of Blessing and the Great Bodhisattva by the Shaoxing people, and is said to be the emperor of the Song Dynasty. After the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, the surviving ministers were afraid of the Yuan Dynasty rulers and did not dare to openly offer sacrifices to the Song Dynasty kings, so they had to do it quietly in the dead of night. This kind of festival with national consciousness was later not only widely spread, but also added the meaning of thanking the gods for their blessings and praying for happiness in the coming year. According to the old people's saying, the Bodhisattva in heaven will not enter an unclean house. Therefore, before the blessing, the hall, the sacrificial table, and the sacrificial vessels must be swept and scrubbed clean. After the "five sacrificial offerings" are cooked, they are placed on large wooden vermillion-lacquered plates. There are certain rules for its arrangement, such as chickens and geese to kneel, head toward the God of Fortune, to show welcome; a live carp with a red rope through the back of the thorns hanging in the "Dragon Gate frame", with red paper pasted color eyes, is to take the "Carp jumped the Dragon Gate" meaning. If the ceremony is held late at night, the atmosphere is more solemn. Men according to the seniority of the three kneeling and nine kowtow rite, women and individual jealousy of the Chinese zodiac sign of the male should be avoided. Not to mention the widow of the hundred body Moling Xianglin sister-in-law, is the wife of the Lu Fu, the ladies are also deprived of the blessing qualification.

After the blessing, the ancestor worship (commonly known as "please return to the hall soup and rice"). The table is laid horizontally according to the wood grain of the table during the blessing, but straight during the ancestor worship; the sweeper salutes outward during the blessing, but kneels inward during the ancestor worship. After the ancestor worship, the rice cake or noodles are cooked in the soup of the blessing ceremony and eaten, which is called "scattering blessings", indicating that the "blessings" given by God have been released to the family. New Year's Eve customs, Shaoxing and foreign similar. "New Year's Eve eating and drinking, you have been dressed", this is the climax of the New Year.

4, Henan Province

Kaifeng New Year

Kaifeng folk call the Spring Festival "New Year".

The New Year's Eve is customarily called New Year's Eve, and every household has to put up Spring Festival couplets. Now on New Year's Eve to worship friends and relatives, watching TV, guessing the jinx, until late at night, some family reunions, mutual encouragement, summarize the gains of the year, the development of a new year's work and learning plans." The "New Year's Eve" has been given a new content in the new era. When the clock strikes midnight, people scramble to set off the first firecracker, which in turn signifies Kaifeng people's determination and energy to open up the future.

On the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar, families get up early, change new clothes, wash and clean, the first firecrackers, worship ancestors statue. Then, the younger generation to the elders to pay tribute to the New Year, the elders to give the younger generation "pressure money". The family eats New Year's dumplings and then begins to pay homage to friends and relatives. Each family for the reception and other New Year's guests, the family often prepared cigarettes, tea, melon seeds, peanuts, candy and so on. According to Kaifeng "early to pay tribute to the New Year, late to pay tribute to life," the custom, the first afternoon, the New Year's activities came to an end.

The second day of the first month is the girl back to her mother's home. In the old days on the second day of the month, Kaifeng City, four townships, firecrackers, sirens, whistles into a piece, mules and horses, big car shuttle, an endless stream.

The third day of the first month for the sacrifice of graves, sacrificing ancestors of the date, because the old calendar said that this day, "all things are not appropriate", the third Kaifeng taboo on going to relatives. The first five for the broken five festival, folk believe that the first five is the first year after the first inauspicious day, friends and relatives are also jealous of each other to visit. In addition to these two days, the festival, Kaifeng folk go to friends and relatives, a few days.

5, Sichuan Province

Sichuan Hakka Spring Festival customs

The Hakka people attach great importance to the Lunar New Year. Every household hangs colorful lanterns, pastes door gods, and writes auspicious language on granaries, poultry and livestock pens to show that the coming year's harvest is auspicious. Conditions of the Hakka townships from the first month to February to play the lamp dance, the types of lamps are dragon lamps, lion lamps, clam lamps, etc., which is the Hakka people in the origin of the colorful lamps of the custom handed down to this day.

In addition, there are large-scale celebrations - dragon dance, there are colorful dragons, fire dragons, dragons, water dragons, off the dragon and and on the Sichuan dragon. Among them, the Shangchuan Dragon is the most distinctive. Shangchuan dragon is the early Qing Dynasty Liu immigrants from Jiangxi Province brought to the west of Sichuan, by the Liu clan year after year to tie the dragon, year after year to dance the dragon, for the New Year's Day, pray for the wind and rain. The Shangchuan Dragon is huge and majestic, operated and danced by thirty to fifty people, with a dragon head weighing thirty to fifty pounds, and is skillful in playing the dragon and has many paths.

6, Guangxi Province

Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region

Dancing Spring Bull

Playing flat stretcher for the New Year

"Pounding the hall in the first month of the year is closed Boom Boom, and this year there is plenty of corn everywhere." This is an ancient proverb passed down by Zhuang families in Mashan, Du'an, Shanglin and Xincheng in Guangxi. Today, instead of pounding bamboos, farmers use flat burdens, wooden boards replace large wooden troughs, and the old pounding hall has been revitalized in the form of entertainment by playing flat burdens.

From New Year's Eve to the fifteenth day of the first month of the year, the light and pleasant sound of "Dengdengda, Dengdengda, Dengdengda doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo" resounds all over the mountainous countryside of the Zhuang people.

The dance form of playing the flat-bell has various sets of dances such as double dance, four people wearing flowers, and many people wearing flowers, etc. The dancers are mostly in pairs. The dancers are mostly in even numbers. The dancers hold the flat stretcher in their hands and gather around the bench or rice-pounding trough, rhythmically beating the bench and hitting each other's flat stretcher at times. The stretcher is used freely in the hands, or front, or back, or side to side, and the sound emitted is either brittle, or dull, and the sound is different, forming a rhythm with a bright rhythm and undulating rhythm. In the flat stretcher constantly hit each other, the performers keep wearing flowers and turning, which makes people's eyes dazzled. The skillful movements are easily accomplished in the sound of the stretcher hitting the ground.

The dance vocabulary of "Playing Flat Stretcher" is rich in the color of farming culture, and the dance modeling is closely related to farming, with performances of raking and transplanting rice seedlings, bailing water and cultivating the fields, harvesting and playing the field, and pounding rice to taste the new, etc. The artistic image is life-like and labor-intensive. The artistic image of life, labor is extremely prominent, it is firmly rooted in the soil of the Zhuang family, will be evergreen.

7. Guizhou Province

The Year of the Dong

The traditional festival of the Dong people. Popular in the area of Jiuzai District, Jinping County, Guizhou. It is held on the 30th day of the 11th month of the lunar calendar every year. Local legend has it that a long time ago, there was a highly respected head of the clan, because he refused to pay tribute to the Han people, who led a siege of the village. In order to protect the dignity of the nation and the safety of the villagers, the head of the clan stood up and was enlisted by the Han people to guard the border. Later, the head of the clan was allowed to return home from the frontier on the 30th day of the 11th month of the lunar calendar. The local people played lusheng, pipa, gongs and drums to visit the head of the clan. Later, this day became the Year of the Dong. During the festival, in addition to playing patties, each family also killed pigs and sheep to celebrate. On the night of the New Year, people eat mainly meat and avoid vegetables. More rice is cooked than usual to show that "there is more than enough left to eat". Before dinner, the old people in the shrine and the "ancestors corner" set up offerings, burning incense and paper to sacrifice to the ancestors, inviting the ancestors to New Year's Eve, and the whole family developed and happy. Then the whole family feasts. Married girls and their relatives and friends also come to congratulate them on the Dong New Year. The main entertainment on the day of the festival is bullfighting, and in the evening the winner is invited to a banquet by firing cannons. Young men and women look for their partners by playing the mountain, singing songs and dancing Lusheng. Dong opera is also performed. These festivities continue until the Spring Festival.

8, Shaanxi Province

The Spring Festival in Northern Shaanxi

The people of the yellow land attach importance to festivals, and there are many festivals in a year, however, people pay most attention to the Spring Festival. Here there is such a custom, the New Year's Day are to give the child to do a "jujube card card". "Date card card" is to use red thread threaded with jujube, cereal straw, hanging a copper coin above, below the fall of a firecracker, hanging in the back of the child, which is a kind of blessing to ward off evil good luck. Some people use red thread to do needlework with the "thimble", hanging in the child's neck, which is also a blessing of good luck, called "increase the age of the thimble". Each year, one more is added until the child reaches the age of twelve.

When New Year's Eve arrives, everything is ready for it, including putting up couplets, playing vinegar charcoal, hanging red lanterns and cleaning the courtyard. A unique custom is to put a piece of red-hot coal on an iron spoon and pour vinegar over it. "This is done in every corner of the house to drive away evil spirits, but it is actually a scientific way of sterilizing and disinfecting the house. At nightfall, the elderly always reverently honor the gods by lighting incense and burning paper, and leading their curious grandchildren to kowtow. The older children are busy setting off cannons and lighting fire towers. Careful mothers-in-law put charcoal and ice by the door, and set up a rolling pin and a knife and axe behind the door, which are said to be evil-suppressing, and are called "New Year's Eve Watching" in this area. People always sleep late on New Year's Eve. Generally, the lights in the house are kept on all night long, which is a sign of peace in all seasons and a long life. Put some food in the pot, which is called "shine the pot", meaning that there is no shortage of food in a year. Some old people can not sleep this night, a person quietly step on the dark climbed to the top of the mountain, facing the east to look, this is called "Pin Tian". Then, the old people will be busy welcoming the gods, receiving Zaojun. The children run out early to pay New Year's visit. The New Year's greetings here are called "asking for health", and the younger generation will ask for health when they see their elders, such as "Grandpa is strong and healthy!" "Grandma, you're strong!" The elders would reply, "The doll is good!" It means to praise the child's health and progress. This kind of New Year's greeting is not limited to children, that is, the man who has married and raised children, see the elders are also so.

The rice-planting song to pay homage to the New Year is a unique flavor of northern Shaanxi customs. During the Spring Festival, villages are organized rice-planting teams, door to door to pay homage to the New Year, where it is commonly known as "along the door". Yangge to pay homage to the New Year is first to visit the temple, honor the gods, pray for a year of good weather conditions and a good harvest, and then to each household to pay homage to the New Year. Rice-planting team to each household, umbrella head touched the scene, improvisation to create their own lyrics to the master blessing. For example, "Look up when you enter the gate, the six stone kilns are all spread out, the grains are plentiful and people are prosperous, and peace is guaranteed all year round."

9, Heilongjiang Province

Harbin ice lanterns to welcome the Spring Festival

Ice lanterns have a long history of art. The annual ice lantern parade is a large-scale project. Raw materials require transparent ice without impurities. Ice carving works here enjoy a unique source of raw materials. One of China's major rivers, the Songhua River, flows through Harbin. The river water is naturally frozen and is precisely transparent. In the freezing winter, when the gushing river stops to take a breather, the workers first use chainsaws to cut the ice on the river surface, and then fish for ice, after a series of procedures such as chiseling holes, installing lamps, pulling wires, pouring with water, carving, etc., in order to carve out a piece of ice and snow works of art, each of which is the release of the artists to life, to the understanding of art. Harbin's Ice Lantern Parade attracts thousands of tourists every year, among them, it is not difficult to find many tourists from tropical countries a pair of excited eyes. These people who have not seen snow in the sky and ice on the ground, to China to see the ice lanterns, became a major event they look forward to in the Spring Festival.

10, Fujian Province

South Fujian New Year customs

South Fujian around the countryside New Year's custom appears to be different from the city. Rural farmhouse, room more doors, in addition to posting the Spring Festival couplets, the door on both sides of the room should be set aside two circles of red paper stickers of the root sugar cane, called "door cane", the dialect of "cane" and "good" near the sound, means It means to enter a good place. The tables in the hall are decorated with New Year's rice, New Year's vegetables, hair cakes, and inserted with "spring branches" tied with red and yellow paper, implying that the rice will be plentiful and auspicious for a long time to come. Each family should be the potato vine wood sticks stacked outside the gate, lit to be its smoke around the fire, men according to generation jumped over the pile of flames, jumping while reading: "Jump in to, year after year, great wealth; jump out, no worries * * * no worries; jumped over the East, grains to eat is not empty; jumped over the West, the money and silver rolled in." This is called "fire group", symbolizing the burning of the old year's evil, eliminating disasters over the luck, ushering in a clean, auspicious New Year. "Jumping fire group", we should use the new broom to clean the hall, after sweeping the broom dustpan together, the garbage heap door, I hope that wish to come out from the dustpan again, to help make a fortune. At the same time, we should collect some of the remaining ashes from the fire and add them to the charcoal stove, which is called "Tim Wong", symbolizing more prosperity. Parents rate children sitting around the stove, called "around the stove to observe the New Year", the best all-night vigil, it is said that this is for parents to add life. At this time, the elders to the younger generation to share the New Year's money, called "divided round". With social progress, the pace of life accelerated, southern Fujian countryside, some of the cumbersome customs have gradually been abolished, but the farmers look forward to a good year's custom is still preserved. Especially "around the stove" in the cold winter months, the whole family around the warmth of the small stove to drink and talk about the old year looking forward to the future, that is how cozy, how happy.