|
Festival Name |
Date |
Customs |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese New Year |
1st - 15th of the first lunar month
|
Pasting scrolls, the character 'Fu', and paper-cuts pictures, setting-off firecrackers and fireworks, paying New Year visits, and eating dumplings (jiaozi). | |
| Lantern Festival |
15th day of the first lunar month
|
Watching lanterns and fireworks, guessing lantern riddles, performing folk dances, and eating sweet dumplings (yuanxiao). | |
| Qingming Festival |
April 4th or 5th of the solar calendar
|
Tomb sweeping, spring outings, and flying kites. | |
| Dragon Boat Festival |
5th day of the 5th lunar month
|
Dragon boat racing, eating zongzi, wearing a perfume pouch and tying five-colour silk thread, and hanging mugwort leaves and calamus. | |
| Double Seventh Festival |
7th day of seventh lunar month
|
Praying for skillful hands, appreciating the stars, and eating noodles, jiaozi, and wontons. Now it is considered as Chinese Valentines' Day. | |
| Mid-autumn Festival |
15th day of the 8th lunar month
|
Appreciating and offering sacrifice to the moonlight and eating moon cakes. | |
| Double Ninth Festival |
9th day of the 9th lunar month
|
Eating Chongyang cake, drinking chrysanthemum wine, climbing mountains and appreciating beautiful chrysanthemums. | |
| Winter Solstice |
Dec. 21st, 22nd or 23rd in solar calendar
|
Having dumplings in northern areas and having sticky puddings in southern areas. | |
| Laba Festival |
8th day of the 12th lunar month
|
Eating laba rice porridge. | |
Double Seventh Festival
The Double Seventh Festival (Qixi Festival) is one of Chinese traditional festivals, also known as Chinese Valentine's Day. It's based on a romantic legend about a weaver girl and a cowherd.
It falls on the 7th day of the 7th Chinese lunar month. In 2024, it falls on August 10 (Saturday). There is no public holiday.
Double Seventh Festival Facts
A cowherd Niulang with the help of his ox (the demoted cattle god) married a fairy, Zhinü, who became a weaver girl. Zhinü's mother, a goddess, returned Zhinü to heaven. Niulang pursued using the ox's hide. The goddess separated them by a river of stars (the Milky Way), but magpies were allowed to form a bridge for them to meet once a year (Qixi).
How Chinese Valentines' Day is celebrated now
Double Seven Festival is the most romantic of traditional Chinese festivals, and since China's globalization it's become known as "Chinese Valentine's Day".
Now people usually celebrate Chinese Valentine's Day by giving flowers, chocolates, and other presents to their sweethearts, instead of doing the traditional customs.
Double Seventh Day - How to Celebrate China's Valentine’s Day
An introduction to Chinese traditional festivals
Characterized by diverse styles and themes, traditional Chinese festivals are an important part of the country's history and culture, both ancient and modern. A close relationship exists between many of the traditional festivals and chronology, mathematics, the Chinese Calendar and the twenty-four solar terms. Many of the customs connected with the traditional festivals have links with religious devotions, superstitions and myths. The form which most of the festivals take today was established around the time of the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220) and for many years, various eminent poets have written countless masterpieces describing the festivals and are still recited regularly today.
Almost every festival has its own unique origins and customs which reflect the traditional practices and morality of the whole Chinese nation and its people. The grandest and most popular festivals are the Chinese New Year (Spring Festival), Lantern Festival, Qingming Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-autumn Festival, etc.
Traditional Festivals in China
There are many poems about the moon in Chinese literary history. A lot of literary men expressed their joys and sorrows, their ups and downs, by poetic verse in depicting the moon. The following poem is a masterpiece in Chinese literature wrote by Li Bai respectively.
Drinking alone under the Moon
By Li Bai
From a pot of wine amid the flowers, I drink alone beneath the moonshine without a partner.
Raising my cup, I invite the moon and turn to my shadow which makes us three.
The moon cannot understand my enjoyable drinking, and my shadow only follows silently wherever I go.
The moment with the moon and shadow, I take the opportunity to have a joyous time until the end of spring.
I sing and the moonlight lingers, I dance and my shadow scattered.
Sharing cheer when I am awake, separating our ways when I am drunk
Make our friendships out of the secular world forever; meet next time in the sky together.
Information about the poet: Li Bai had political ambitions when he was young and was a talented poet in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), but he didn’t want to start his political career after coming under imperial examination. He had tried to become a noble from being a commoner in one fell swoop. His friend recommended him to the emperor, but the emperor admired his poem, without paying attention to his political views. This poem was written in the frustration of seeing all his ambitions dashed and presenting his grief and personal loneliness.
The Downstairs Girl by
A Reese's Book Club YA Pick and New York Times Bestseller From the critically acclaimed author of Luck of the Titanic, Under a Painted Sky, and Outrun the Moon comes a powerful novel about identity, betrayal, and the meaning of family. By day, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady's maid for the cruel daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for the genteel Southern lady, "Dear Miss Sweetie." When her column becomes wildly popular, she uses the power of the pen to address some of society's ills, but she's not prepared for the backlash that follows when her column challenges fixed ideas about race and gender. While her opponents clamor to uncover the secret identity of Miss Sweetie, a mysterious letter sets Jo off on a search for her own past and the parents who abandoned her as a baby. But when her efforts put her in the crosshairs of Atlanta's most notorious criminal, Jo must decide whether she, a girl used to living in the shadows, is ready to step into the light. With prose that is witty, insightful, and at times heartbreaking, Stacey Lee masterfully crafts an extraordinary social drama set in the New South. "This vividly rendered historic novel will keep readers riveted as witty, observant Jo deals with the dangers of questioning power." --The Washington Post "Holds a mirror to our present issues while giving us a detailed and vibrant picture of life in the past." --The New York Times "A joyful read . . . The Downstairs Girl, for all its serious and timely content, is a jolly good time." --NPR
The Library of Legends by
"The Library of Legends is a gorgeous, poetic journey threaded with mist and magic about a group from a Chinese university who take to the road to escape the Japanese invasion of 1937 - only to discover that danger stalks them from within. Janie Chang pens pure enchantment!" --Kate Quinn, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Huntress From the author of Three Souls and Dragon Springs Road comes a captivating historical novel--the third in a loosely-connected trilogy--in which a young woman travels across China with a convoy of student refugees, fleeing the hostilities of a brutal war with Japan. "Myths are the darkest and brightest incarnations of who we are..." China, 1937: When Japanese bombs begin falling on the city of Nanking, nineteen-year-old Hu Lian and her classmates at Minghua University are ordered to flee. Lian and a convoy of more than a hundred students, faculty, and staff must walk a thousand miles to the safety of China's western provinces, a journey marred by hunger, cold, and the constant threat of aerial attack. And it is not just the student refugees who are at risk: Lian and her classmates have been entrusted with a priceless treasure, a 500-year-old collection of myths and folklore known as the Library of Legends. Her family's past has made Lian wary of forming attachments, but the students' common duty to safeguard the Library of Legends forms unexpected bonds. Lian finds friendship and a cautious romance with the handsome and wealthy Liu Shaoming. But after one classmate is murdered and another arrested, Lian realizes she must escape from the convoy before a family secret puts her in danger. Accompanied by Shao and the enigmatic maidservant Sparrow, Lian makes her way to Shanghai, hoping to reunite with her mother. On the journey, Lian learns of the connection between her two companions and a tale from the Library of Legends, The Willow Star and the Prince. Learning Shao and Sparrow's true identities compels Lian to confront her feelings for Shao. But there are broader consequences too, for as the ancient books travel across China, they awaken immortals and guardian spirits to embark on an exodus of their own, one that changes the country's fate forever. Based on true events, rich in Chinese history and lore, The Library of Legends is both an illuminating exploration of China's recent past and an evocative tale of love, sacrifice, and the extraordinary power of storytelling.
Iron Widow by
An instant #1 New York Times bestseller! Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid's Tale in this blend of Chinese history and mecha science fiction for YA readers. The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn't matter that the girls often die from the mental strain. When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected--she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​ To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way--and stop more girls from being sacrificed.
Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time by
Stanford Wong is in big trouble--or as he would spell it, "trubble"--in this laugh-out-loud companion to the award-winning MILLICENT MIN, GIRL GENIUS and this season's HC, EMILY EBERS.Stanford Wong is having a bad summer. If he flunks his summer-school English class, he won't pass sixth grade. If that happens, he won't start on the A-team. If *that* happens, his friends will abandon him and Emily Ebers won't like him anymore. And if THAT happens, his life will be over. Soon his parents are fighting, his grandmother Yin-Yin hates her new nursing home, he's being "tutored" by the world's biggest nerdball Millicent Min--and he's not sure his ballpoint "Emily" tattoo is ever going to wash off.
Ten facts about Chinese New Year
Tidy your family grave sites. Sweep away any weeds or debris, place flower arrangements and freshen the paint on the gravestone’s lettering. Symbolically, a clean gravesite lets your relatives know that they remain in your thoughts.
Make offerings of food, incense and joss paper. The Chinese believe that ceremonial offerings convey material comforts from this world to the afterlife. Food and drink provide nourishment, while “hell money” and paper replicas of cars, appliances and electronics provide the luxuries relatives may have lacked while living.
Stroll in the countryside. Taking a springtime outing known as taqing, is a great way to enjoy the season’s new blossoms. For a solution closer to home, you could visit your local botanical garden, camp in your backyard or stroll through your neighbourhood park early in the morning.
Go fly a kite. Animals or characters from Chinese opera are popular, though it may be most fun to add small lights that make the kites twinkle like stars when flown in the dark night sky.