Happy New Year, China!
Today I woke up noticing my Chinese neighbours being quite excited. They were setting the laptop in the kitchen and trying to watch the main chinese tv channel (CCTV) through the internet.
What’s going on here? - they look at me quite surprised -come on you don’t know? today is new year’s eve in China! For all Chinese people around the world is a very important day!
“[from Wikipedia] Chinese New Year or Spring Festival is one of the most important traditional Chinese holidays. It is sometimes called the Lunar New Year, especially by people outside China. The festival traditionally begins on the first day of the first lunar month (Chinese: æ£æœˆ; pinyin: zhÄ“ng yuè) in the Chinese calendar and ends on the 15th; this day is called Lantern Festival. Chinese New Year’s Eve is known as ChúxÄ«. It literally means “Year-pass Eve”.
Wow! nice!!!!!! You can also have a look at this video:
CCTV1 was broadcasting a huge special about this, but, surprisingly they did not show so much about colorful celebrations . They focused on the president Hu Jintao visiting common people, poor people, people who have to work during this holiday, etc. They then showed famous places around the world where people were celebrating China new year’s eve (not only Chinese ones, like in Harvard and NY). The atmosphere of spreading happiness seemed to me quite genuine. Maybe you can disagree on this point and call it propaganda. I don’t think so. I was feeling a kind of true human contact between the highest chinese politic figure and the common people of the “People’s Republic of China“. I was impressed.
And you know, the Chinese wave is huge. When it resonates worldwide with such a positive energy (as it was at the Olympic Games last year) is really nice. I think, I’ ve got a better insights into their culture, today. Of course I remain aware of the dark side of the moon.
Happy New Year, China!
img credit: chineseculture.com
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Cheers! Sandra. R.
