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HomeTopics...Asia VacationsChinese Festivals
Chinese Festivals and HolidaysWhen planning your vacation to China, try to plan your visit to coincide with one of the major annual Chinese festivals. Unlike official Western holidays which are celebrated on a fixed date each year based on the Gregorian calendar, Chinese festivals use the lunar calendar and the dates of festivals vary according to the phases of the moon.
Chinese New YearThe Chinese New Year, or Chinese Spring Festival, is held on the first three days of the first lunar month. The Chinese New Year Festival is a colorful extravaganza when Chinese people around the world celebrate the beginning of the Lunar New Year.
In China, the Chinese New Year is an important time for family get-togethers, when people decorate their homes with pictures and verses in true Spring Festival fashion. Chinese New Year celebrations start on the last day of the twelfth month of the lunar calendar with a special family dinner followed by family entertainment. Celebrations often continue throughout the night and into the first morning of the Chinese New Year, when friends and relatives make impromptu visits to one another's homes. Typical Chinese New Year celebrations outside the home involve lively street processions, lion and dragon-lantern dancing, stilt walking, music and singing amid a general atmosphere of fun and frivolity.
Chinese Dragon Boat FestivalThe Dragon Boat Festival (Duan Wu) is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. According to historians, the original Dragon Boat Festival was held in honor of the poet and patriot Qu Yuan (339 - 278 BC).
Qu Yuan, as the story goes, was a revolutionary thinker whose political theories so challenged the corrupt officials and rulers of the time that he was banished to Huan Province, where his ideas would fall on deaf ears. Shortly afterwards, however, Qu Yuan, upon hearing that his homeland had been defeated by the Quin dynasty, drowned himself in the River Milo, on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. News of his death soon spread to his friends and supporters who immediately raced to the river to try to find his body. To this day, the Dragon Boat Festival, in memory of Qu Yuan and that first river race to find his remains, is widely celebrated throughout the land, especially in the southern regions of China. The Dragon Boat Festival involves teams of oarsmen, racing against each other in rowing boats decked out in dragon regalia. Traditionally, Zongzi (triangle-shaped dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves with sweet or savory fillings) are served at the Dragon Boat Festival to symbolize the morsels of food allegedly dropped into the river to sustain Qu Yuan, or at least to prevent the fish from eating his body.
Chinese Moon FestivalThe Chinese Moon Festival, or Mid-autumn Festival, on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, marks the brightest full moon of the lunar calendar (the harvest moon). The Moon Festival dates back to the Tang dynasty (618 – 907 AD) when farmers planted and harvested their crops according to the phases of the moon. They would then perform ritual lion dances and pray for rain.
The Moon Festival is an important holiday in modern China and an opportunity for families to get together for fun, festivities, dragon and lion dancing, moon gazing and feasting on moon cakes (traditional round pastries, filled with fruit, jam or red bean paste).
Chinese Lantern FestivalThe Lantern Festival (Yuanxiao Jie) falls on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month at the first full moon following the Chinese New Year. Yuanxiao, or sweet dumplings, symbolizing reunion, are consumed to mark the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations.
The Lantern Festival dates back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 221 AD), although the festival also claims to have Taoist origins. Today's Lantern Festival is a light-hearted affair where people carrying decorative lanterns parade through the streets. Lion watching, dragon dancing, stilt walking, fireworks, fun and games are all part of the enduringly popular Chinese Lantern Festival.
Chinese Festivals at Your Fingertips
Exceptions to lunar calendar-based festivals, where Chinese festivals fall on a fixed date each year include:
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