Chinese New Year

These last two weeks in school we have been focusing our minds on the Chinese New Year. I have written this piece on the Chinese New Year. I hope that you like it!

Chinese new year

‘Kung hei fat Choy’

You may be a rat, you may be dragon, and you may even be an ox. You are probably thinking ‘I am none of these are you thinking’. But according to Chinese legend you are one of twelve different animals.

The Chinese New Year is china’s biggest festival year in, year out. Every year in late January or occasionally very early February the Chinese celebrate at this festive time. On the day of the black moon they start a fifteen day period where they celebrate down in the streets to perform ancient Chinese traditions and spend lots of time with all their families.

The animals from the twelve year cycle are rooster, horse, pig, snake, dragon and many more. Each of the festive animals has a unique description and if you are born in the year of the rat you are meant to have some of the rat’s abilities.

This year is the Chinese year of the horse and if you are born in 2002 this is your year. The horse is very hardworking, and will on and on until a job is finished. They are very intelligent, ambitious and expect to succeed, can cope with several projects at once and they very easily fall in love.

Some of the ancient traditions are to sweep the house top to bottom to get rid of any of last year’s bad luck. Other customs are to hide all of the knives in the house because in China it is believed that if you chop something you are cutting away good luck .Doors and windows are newly painted red to ward off the ancient spirit Nian. On New Year’s day the Chinese prepare a special dish which consists of a coin stuffed into a dumpling and however is to find this coin shall apparently have good luck all year round.

The Chinese New Year is a fantastic time of the year for all; with all of their crazy traditions it must be such a special time of the year and that’s why they celebrate for 15 whole days. This truly is a fascinating subject and I wish to write more about this interesting time of the year.