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Fun facts about travel during Spring Festival 1. So many people travel around the time of Spring Festival (most going home to be with their families) the phenomenon has been given its own name: Chun Yun, or “Spring [Festival] travel”. 2. During the 2005 Spring Festival season, nearly two billion individual passenger trips were taken [...]

Shadow puppetry in China goes back as far as the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E. – 25 C.E.), so it’s no surprise that when Spring Festival comes around, practitioners of this traditional art put on some special shows for the holiday. There are many Shadow puppet plays that tell stories about Spring Festival, and shadow puppet [...]

Every year on the night before the first day of the Spring Festival, CCTV’s annual Gala draws more viewers than any other television program all year, more TV viewers than any other event on the planet with the possible exception of the football World Cup final match. Much like New Year’s Eve TV shows in [...]

Just because Spring Festival is a great time to see Chinese entertainment professionals perform dances, operas, and the like doesn’t mean that common people don’t get in on the artistic fun. Folk art forms have flourished in China for thousands of years, and Spring Festival brings with it a fantastic reason to redecorate the house [...]

In the South, Chinese people enjoy delicious New Year cakes during the Spring Festival. This tradition goes back to a myth about the Kitchen God, a man who was posthumously granted the position of Kitchen God after the emperor heard about his noble death. The Kitchen God reports on people’s behavior, so, the tradition goes, [...]

In the North, dumplings are by far the most common Spring Festival treat. They are made with a rice-based dough that is pasted around a filling in a crescent-like shape – a symbol of the moon and the New Year. These delicious treats have been a Spring Festival delicacy for over 1,600 years, and they [...]

Celebrations of CNY 2010 in New York include fireworks, parades, dance, music and Peking Opera, will be most lively in Chinatown, Flushing and China Institute with family programs.

Spring Festival is a time when families get together and celebrate, and just like in the West, that means lots and lots of eating! There are tons of goodies to choose from, but the most important meal happens on the night before the first day of the New Year, when families gather as one and [...]