Spring festival – the most important festival in China

Spring festival, known as Chunjie in Chinese, is the first day of the year in lunar calendar. This year it was January 28. It is celebrated also in some other Asian countries such as Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia.

As the most important festival in China, the holidays have started actually a week before the spring festival day, lasting two weeks after it, being altogether three weeks. The government shorten it nowadays to one week so that the length of holidays would be balanced among the year.

If you have business with Chinese people, you will feel that they are quite enthusiastic of the preparation of the holiday instead of opening up a new case in work. In a small private company, the financial report and commitment debt must be done before the new year. A week or couple of days before the festival, workers are ready to go back to their hometowns for reunion with their families. It will normally last two weeks after the Spring festival day. Ordinary life will be influenced to some extent because of the absence of these diligent couriers, caregivers, babysitters and factory workers.

When spring festival is approaching, Chinese people are busy purchasing goods, cleaning house and cooking traditional food. The most important thing is to have a family dinner on Spring festival eve. For many families, this may the only chance for family members to reunion and enjoy quality of life.

Some traditional things must be done during spring festival. For example, you need to remove previous spring poems and paste pairs. On Spring festival, people dressed in their new clothes visit each other and give money (known as Red envelope) to kids to send good wishes. Red is the elemental color for Spring festival. It represents happiness, joy and prosperity.