Happy 2011 Spring Festival and Happy The Year of Rabbit!

The Spring Festival which also know as ”New Year Festival” in China, it is the most important and most ceremonious traditional festival of the Chinese nation.


Since the first year of in the beginning of Han Wu emperor, the day of January 1 of Lunar calendar each year was been enacted as the "beginning of the year", the date of ”New Year Festival” thus fixed since that and continues to this day. The “New Year Festival” was called as "New Year's Day” in ancient times. 1911, when the Xinhai Revolution taken place, the government began to use the Gregorian calendar to count the year, then January 1 of the Gregorian calendar as reputed as "New Year's Day”, and the first day of the first lunar month was taken as the "Spring Festival. "

Chinese New Year is the longest and most important festivity in the Chinese Lunar Calendar. The origin of Chinese New Year is itself centuries old and gains significance because of several myths and traditions. Ancient Chinese New Year is a reflection on how the people behaved and what they believed in the most.

The Spring Festival is the most important festival for the Chinese people and is when all family members get together, just like Christmas in the West. All people living away from home go back, becoming the busiest time for transportation systems of about half a month from the Spring Festival. Airports, railway stations and long-distance bus stations are crowded with home returnees.

The Spring Festival falls on the 1st day of the 1st lunar month, often one month later than the Gregorian calendar. It originated in the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 BC-c. 1100 BC) from the people's sacrifice to gods and ancestors at the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one.

Strictly speaking, the Spring Festival starts every year in the early days of the 12th lunar month and will last till the mid 1st lunar month of the next year. Of them, the most important days are Spring Festival Eve and the first three days. The Chinese government now stipulates people have seven days off for the Chinese Lunar New Year.



Many customs accompany the Spring Festival. Some are still followed today, but others have weakened.

On the 8th day of the 12th lunar month, many families make laba porridge, a delicious kind of porridge made with glutinous rice, millet, seeds of Job's tears, jujube berries, lotus seeds, beans, longan and gingko.

The 23rd day of the 12th lunar month is called Preliminary Eve. At this time, people offer sacrifice to the kitchen god. Now however, most families make delicious food to enjoy themselves.

After the Preliminary Eve, people begin preparing for the coming New Year. This is called "Seeing the New Year in".

Store owners are busy then as everybody goes out to purchase necessities for the New Year. Materials not only include edible oil, rice, flour, chicken, duck, fish and meat, but also fruit, candies and kinds of nuts. What's more, various decorations, new clothes and shoes for the children as well as gifts for the elderly, friends and relatives, are all on the list of purchasing.

Before the New Year comes, the people completely clean the indoors and outdoors of their homes as well as their clothes, bedclothes and all their utensils.

Then people begin decorating their clean rooms featuring an atmosphere of rejoicing and festivity. All the door panels will be pasted with Spring Festival couplets, highlighting Chinese calligraphy with black characters on red paper. The content varies from house owners' wishes for a bright future to good luck for the New Year. Also, pictures of the god of doors and wealth will be posted on front doors to ward off evil spirits and welcome peace and abundance.



The Chinese character "fu" (meaning blessing or happiness) is a must. The character put on paper can be pasted normally or upside down, for in Chinese the "reversed fu" is homophonic with "fu comes", both being pronounced as "fudaole." What's more, two big red lanterns can be raised on both sides of the front door. Red paper-cuttings can be seen on window glass and brightly colored New Year paintings with auspicious meanings may be put on the wall.

People attach great importance to Spring Festival Eve. At that time, all family members eat dinner together. The meal is more luxurious than usual. Dishes such as chicken, fish and bean curd cannot be excluded, for in Chinese, their pronunciations, respectively "ji", "yu" and "doufu," mean auspiciousness, abundance and richness. After the dinner, the whole family will sit together, chatting and watching TV. In recent years, the Spring Festival party broadcast on China Central Television Station (CCTV) is essential entertainment for the Chinese both at home and abroad. According to custom, each family will stay up to see the New Year in.

Waking up on New Year, everybody dresses up. First they extend greetings to their parents. Then each child will get money as a New Year gift, wrapped up in red paper. People in northern China will eat jiaozi, or dumplings, for breakfast, as they think "jiaozi" in sound means "bidding farewell to the old and ushering in the new". Also, the shape of the dumpling is like gold ingot from ancient China. So people eat them and wish for money and treasure.

Southern Chinese eat niangao (New Year cake made of glutinous rice flour) on this occasion, because as a homophone, niangao means "higher and higher, one year after another." The first five days after the Spring Festival are a good time for relatives, friends, and classmates as well as colleagues to exchange greetings, gifts and chat leisurely.



Burning fireworks was once the most typical custom on the Spring Festival. People thought the spluttering sound could help drive away evil spirits. However, such an activity was completely or partially forbidden in big cities once the government took security, noise and pollution factors into consideration. As a replacement, some buy tapes with firecracker sounds to listen to, some break little balloons to get the sound too, while others buy firecracker handicrafts to hang in the living room.

The lively atmosphere not only fills every household, but permeates to streets and lanes. A series of activities such as lion dancing, dragon lantern dancing, lantern festivals and temple fairs will be held for days. The Spring Festival then comes to an end when the Lantern Festival is finished.

Chinese New Year or the Chinese Lunar New Year is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. Despite its winter occurrence, in China it is known as "Spring Festival," the literal translation of the Chinese name (Pinyin: Chūn Jié), owing to the difference between Western and traditional Chinese methods for computing the seasons.



Now, as the "Spring Festival" in China and the new Lunar Year of Rabbit is coming at the corner of street, we are also on the tiptoe of expecting a long term holiday to stay and enjoy this traditional festival with our family members, it is so happy and exciting! now let me send my best wishes to all Chinese people no matter you are in domestic or go abroad, wish you and your whole family Happy New Year and Happy Spring Fesival!

* Original address of this China gift post: China Gift and Fine Arts & Crafts

Happy Laba Festival!

Today in China, is the 8th day of December of the lunar calendar (eighth day of the twelfth lunar month), this day is the traditional “Laba Festival” in China.

The December of the lunar calendar is known as the twelfth lunar month commonly, and the 8th day of December of the lunar calendar is customarily called "Laba", the Laba Festival in China has a very long tradition and history, on that day people to cook and eat Laba porridge is the the most traditional and most luxurious custom all over the country in China.





In China, the history of people eating Laba porridge has lasted for more than one thousand years. Laba porridge also called "Seven Treasures and Five Flavors porridge." The custom was began firstly in the Song Dynasty, and when days come to the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, whether the court, officials, temples, or common people will cook Laba porridge at home.

In the Qing Dynasty, the custom of eating Laba porridge become more popular. In palace, the Emperor, Queen, Princes and so on will accustomed to largess the civil and military ministers, chamberlains and maids and Laba porridge, and at the same time will distribute rice and fruits to various temples. In folk society, every family will cook Laba porridge and worship their ancestors; The same time, all members of the family will reunite together to eat Laba porridge, as well as presenting Laba porridge to their relatives and good friends.

In China, people cook Laba porridge in different areas has a great variety throughout China, artful and wide variety. Among them, the most daintily pattern is in Peking, where people will mix in more items into the rice, such as red dates, lotus seeds, walnuts, chestnuts, almonds, pine nuts, longans, hazelnuts, grapes, gingko nuts, chestnuts, black hairs, rose, red beans, peanuts ... ... The total variety will no less than twenty. People will getting busy at the evening of the seventh day in the twelfth lunar month, wash rice, soak fruits, peel skins, remove stones, picking and then began to cook in the middle of the night, and then stew the porridge slowly with low fire until the early morning at the next day, at that time the Laba porridge was to be considered finished fully.

Typically, the Laba porridge was been cooked with eight fresh cereals and fruits which harvest on that year, usually are sweet porridge. However, many farmers in the Central Plains area of China are prefer more to cook salty Laba porridge, so in addition to rice, millet, mung beans, cowpeas, red beans, peanuts, jujubes and other raw materials, they will add sliced pork, radish, cabbage, vermicelli, seaweed, tofu, etc. into the Laba porridge..

The Cooking way of Laba porridge:

Ingredients: rice, black rice, glutinous rice, barley, peanuts, red beans, lotus seeds, red dates.

Practices:

1. Wash all the ingredients, add with sufficit quantum of water;

2. Put all ingredients into an electric pressure pot and steam it for about 35 minutes.


In addition, the "Laba Festival " in China is also the most important festival in the twelfth lunar month, which was know as "La Day in ancient time. " From the Qin Dynasty, the Laba Festival was used to worship the ancestors and gods, as well as pray for good harvest and good fortune. During the Laba Festival, aside from the worship activities, people were accustomed to expel epidemic diseases.

* Original address of this China gift post: China Gift and Fine Arts & Crafts

On Going Home For Christmas - Merry Christmas!

He little knew the sorrow that was in his vacant chair;
He never guessed they'd miss him, or he'd surely have been there;
He couldn't see his mother or the lump that filled her throat,
Or the tears that started falling as she read his hasty note;
And he couldn't see his father, sitting sor- rowful and dumb,
Or he never would have written that he thought he couldn't come.

He little knew the gladness that his presence would have made,
And the joy it would have given, or he never would have stayed.
He didn't know how hungry had the little mother grown
Once again to see her baby and to claim him for her own.
He didn't guess the meaning of his visit Christmas Day
Or he never would have written that he couldn't get away.

He couldn't see the fading of the cheeks that once were pink,
And the silver in the tresses; and he didn't stop to think
How the years are passing swiftly, and next Christmas it might be
There would be no home to visit and no mother dear to see.
He didn't think about it -- I'll not say he didn't care.
He was heedless and forgetful or he'd surely have been there.

Just sit down and write a letter -- it will make their heart strings hum
With a tune of perfect gladness -- if you'll tell them that you'll come.

                                      ------ On Going Home For Christmas

* For you all come here: Merry Christmas and Happy
New Year!

* Original address of this China gift post: China Gift and Fine Arts & Crafts in China 

Gem of China History - Yuan Ming Yuan

Yuan Ming Yuan, also known as the 'Old Summer Palace' and originally called the Imperial Gardens, was an extremely large complex of palaces and gardens 8 km (5 miles) northwest of the old city wall of Beijing, China. YuanMingYuan is very close to the Summer Palace.

The China Yuan Ming Yuan Park was know as ‘the Apotheosis of all Garden Art’ and ‘The Garden of Gardens’ with its grand geographical scale, excellent building techniques, fine groups of building landscape, rich culture collection and profound cultural connotation and reputation in the world. Its destruction can be said is the biggest regret in the history of China’s landscape architecture.

Formerly Yuan Ming Yuan was translated as ‘Old Summer Palace’, for it is the palace for the emperor living in summer days, which is very similar with the Summer Palace (Yihe Park) in China.

The Yuan Ming Yuan is composed by three main gardens, they are: the Garden of Perfect Brightness proper; the Garden of Eternal Spring; the Elegant Spring Garden.

TheYuan Ming Yuan inherited the outstanding tradition of garden building of three thousand years of China, it is both grand, elegant as court buildings and graceful as gardens in south of Yangtze River. At the same time, the Yuan Ming Yuan had absorbed the garden architecture style of Europe, combined different garden building styles into one, and create a perfect and harmonious overall layout.

And there is another garden in the Yuan Ming Yuan featured with style of foreign architectures, that named the European-style palace.

The Old Summer Palace is often associated with the European-style palaces built of stone. The designers of these structures were employed by Emperor Qianlong to satisfy his taste for exotic buildings and objects.

The Yuan Ming Yuan is not only famous for its gardens, but it is also a Royal Museum with very rich collections. French writer Victor Hugo once said: "Even if collected all treasures of all museums in French together, that can not match with this oriental grand and magnificent museum."



This great garden was destroyed during the second Opium War.

It took 3,500 British troops to set the entire place ablaze, taking three days to burn. The Palace was plundered and burned twice, . The first time was in 1860 by French and British army forces, and only 13 royal buildings survived to remain intact, most of them in the remote areas or by the lake side. The second time was in 1900 during the Eight-Nation Alliance invasion, and nothing remained this time.

Although the Yuan Ming Yuan has been destructed, but among the well-preserved gardens, we can still enjoyed the unique style of Chinese gardens: the combination of landscape, painting and poetry formed this unique poetic garden, which to provide a spiritual Utopia to the people living the garden.

Remark: The main several aesthetic elements of Chinese gardens include: asymmetrical;various types of spatial connections; trees, rocks and water; borrowed scenery; inscriptions; use of Feng Shui for choosing site.

* Original address of this China gift post: China Gift and Fine Arts & Crafts in China

How Much you Know about Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving Day is a festival of the United States and Canada, initially was intent on thanks for the good harvest sent by the god. In the U.S., since 1941, the Thanksgiving Day is the fourth Thursday in November annually, and from that day people will be on leave for three days, just like the Chinese New Year, as in that day, no matter how busy, thousands of people will back home to stay together with their families.

The Thanksgiving holiday celebrated an event from the earliest settlers in the United States. On this occasion, we eat turkey with mashed potatoes and the ubiquitous pumpkin pie "pumpkin pie".

The last Thursday of November, all Americans come together as a family to share the traditional Thanksgiving turkey and pumpkin pie.

Thanksgiving is a day of Thanksgiving to thank the Indians and Heaven have enabled the first pilgrims who came from England to settle and live on American soil thanks to good harvests they could do.

The Pilgrims settled at Plymouth Rock December 11, 1620. Their first winter was devastating. At the beginning of the next fall, 46 were dead on the 102 who came on the Mayflower. But the harvest of 1621 was one of the most successful so the remaining colonists decided to celebrate. This feast was more of a traditional "harvest festival" in the English tradition of a real Thanksgiving. It lasted three days.

This celebration of Thanksgiving was not reproduced the following year. But in 1623, during a severe drought, the Pilgrims got together to pray and invoke the rain. When a dense and continuous rain appeared the next day, Governor Bradford proclaimed another day of Thanksgiving, again inviting the Indians. Then it was not until June 1676 that another day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed.

On June 20, 1676, the council of Charlestown, Mass., met to determine what was the best time of year to express its gratitude to the good fortune that has allowed the community to settle. Unanimously, they decided to proclaim June 29 as a day of "Thanksgiving."

October 1777 was the first time or the 13 colonies jointly to celebrate a "Thanksgiving" was to commemorate their victory against the British at Saratoga. But this was the case only once.

Then came George Washington proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789, although some were opposed. Of discord reigned among the colonies, many believing that beliefs of a few Pilgrims did not deserve that devotes a national day. Later, President Thomas Jefferson laughed at the idea of having a "Thanksgiving Day".

It was Sarah Josepha Hale, a magazine editor, who contributed greatly to creating a "Thanksgiving Day". Hale wrote many articles defending his case in his magazines.

Finally in 1863, which President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November a national day of Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was proclaimed by every president after Lincoln. The date changed from time to time, it was amended by including Franklin Roosevelt, who established one week after the last Thursday in order to lengthen the Christmas shopping season. The public protested against this decision so that the President returned it to its original date two years later.

It was during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1941, as Thanksgiving was finally declared "legal holiday" by Congress and was introduced on 4th Thursday of November.

Today, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving everywhere.

Thanksgiving Day in Canada was starting in 1879, it is the second Monday of October every year, which is the same date with the United States Columbus Day.

In addition, the South Koreans are also accustomed to celebrate Thanksgiving, but this tradition has nothing to do with the Thanksgiving Day in North America, Koreans celebrate the Thanksgiving Day with in the Mid-Autumn Festival on the same day.

* Original address of this China gift post: China Gift and Fine Arts & Crafts in China

Do you know China Shadow Play?

Traditional Chinese Shadow Play

Shadow play is not a Chinese specialty, there are shadow plays in other countries as well. However, do you know the shadow play or shadow puppetry is what kind of play?

It is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment using opaque figures in front of an illuminated backdrop to create the illusion of moving images.

In Taiwan, the shadow play was developed from the Chaochow(a county in Guangdong province, China) school of shadow puppet theatre, it was called ‘leather monkey show’ generally.

Chaochow Leather Monkey Show

Older puppeteers estimate that there were at least a hundred shadow puppet troupes in southern Taiwan in the closing years of the Qing. Traditionally, the eight to 12-inch puppet figures, and the stage scenery and props such as furniture, natural scenery, pagodas, halls, and plants are all cut from leather.

In France, although at the beginning the shadow play was spread from China in the past, but when it was added with their local characteristics, this kind of performance immediately become a type of authentic French Art.

The shadow play began to spread to Europe in the mid-18th century, when French missionaries in China took it back to France in 1767 and put on performances in Paris and Marseilles, causing quite a stir. In time, the Ombres chinoises (French for "Chinese Shadows") with local modification and embellishment, became the Ombres françaises and struck root in the country.

Silhouette Animation

Now in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Turkey, these countries all have the tradition of shadow theatre. While Germany pioneered the silhouette animation, this new type shadow play used the same puppet as traditional shadow play, and filmed it frame-by-frame.

* Original address of this China gift post: China Gift and Fine Arts & Crafts in China