As a key part of Chinese culture, traditional Chinese festivals reinforce the bond among Chinese people and preserve their cultural roots. Of all Chinese festivals, the Spring Festival is the most important, both culturally and historically. The first day of the first month in the lunar calendar, the Chinese New Year of this year falls on February 10.

A girl named Duan Zixuan from Xiaotanzi Village, Jungar Banner, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China proudly shows off her paper-cutting art in late January, 2024, which will soon be pasted on a window as a Chinese New Year decoration.

Spring Festival customs are imbued with traditional Chinese values, such as filiality and patriotism. During this period of the year, people offer sacrifices to the earth, heavens, and deities, and pray for good weather, peace for their homeland, and good fortune for their families. They also express their love and gratitude to their ancestors through ancestral worship, revisit the moral teachings of past generations, and maintain family traditions.

The central themes expressed during the Spring Festival are unity, love, and harmony. Its customs, such as the whole family dining together, exchanging visits with relatives and friends, and handing out cash in red envelopes to children, all help foster a strong sense of family belonging and closer family ties. Chinese people return to their hometowns to unite with family during the Spring Festival no matter how far away they might be. This is why China sees the world’s largest human migration, known as the Spring Festival travel rush, every year. The Chinese New Year visits and cordial greetings exchanged between relatives, friends, and neighbours, increase social harmony by strengthening the bond beyond one’s immediate family. During these visits and also at family gatherings, adults often give children cash-stuffed red envelopes, which are believed to protect the receivers from all evil spirits in the coming year. This practice again illustrates the value Chinese people place on family and their young children.

A senior visitor and his granddaughter stroll through a big festival fair in Shagedu Town, Jungar Banner, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China on January 31, 2024.

All elements of the Spring Festival convey good wishes. To celebrate the holiday, people decorate their homes with red couplets, diamond-shaped posters of the Chinese character for happiness (fu) and New Year paintings, all meant to bring in good fortune. At family reunion dinners, dumplings called jiaozi (in north China) or glutinous rice balls in soup called tangyuan (in south China), and glutinous rice cakes called niangao are the must, because jiaozi resembles the gold ingot used as currency in ancient times, tangyuan (tang means soup, yuan means round or ball) is homophonous with “union” in Chinese, and niangao (nian means year and gao sounds like the character which means better or higher) indicates a better year ahead.

A 202-metre-long dragon lantern is lit up to embrace the Spring Festival at the Lotus Market of Shichahai, Beijing on February 8, 2024.

The Chinese Zodiac is a 12-year cycle of which each year has a corresponding animal that symbolizes it. This year is the Year of the Dragon, a mythical creature equipped with magical power to command wind and rain. It has been revered as the totem of the Chinese civilization for millennia, and worship of it can be dated back to the Neolithic Age 8,000 years ago. We Chinese people hence call ourselves descendants of the dragon. As the image of this magical, mighty animal was exclusively associated with the monarch and his control over the state in ancient times, the dragon represents power and nobility in Chinese culture. Its divine nature also gives it the metaphorical sense of being extraordinary, for example, a person who is exceptionally talented, virtuous or successful is often compared to a dragon. As the dragon is the god of rain, which is critical for good harvest, it is regarded as a sign of beneficence, happiness, and good fortune. The past several years of the dragon include 2012, 2000, 1988, 1976, 1964, 1952, and 1940.

Beijing Fun, a complex featuring cultural and creative products, in the famous Dashilan historical and cultural protection area in Beijing, is ablaze with an array of dazzling lanterns for the Spring Festival on February 8, 2024.

As cultures around the world are becoming increasingly intermingled, and cultural customs of China are more accepted by other countries, the Spring Festival is being celebrated by people in more parts of the world. It is now a statutory holiday in two dozen countries and regions and marked by messages from many heads of state and leaders of international organizations. Its celebration has gone beyond the Asian countries that have been heavily influenced by traditional Chinese culture to reach Europe and America.

On December 22, 2023, the 78th United Nations General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution officially designating the Spring Festival as a UN floating holiday. This move marks further recognition of the cultural significance of the traditional Chinese festival, the core concepts of Chinese civilization which it conveys, including peace, amity, and harmony, as well as the values shared by all humanity that it promotes like loving family, inclusive society, and harmonious co-existence between mankind and nature.

A market for traditional cultural products in Dashilan, Beijing, attracts droves of excited visitors on February 8, 2024.

“The Chinese New Year is more than just a cultural celebration; it’s a testament to the diversity and unity of our global community. It’s a time when people of all backgrounds come together to celebrate a tradition that, while rooted in the Chinese culture, has found a home in communities around the world,” observed Shahbaz Khan, director of UNESCO Multisectoral Regional Office for East Asia, in his signed article published by China Today.

For the Maltese people, the Chinese New Year celebration has long been a scintillating facet of their country’s cultural domain. “Since its establishment in 2003, the China Cultural Center in Malta has sought to integrate the Chinese Spring Festival celebration into local life by presenting ‘Happy Chinese New Year’ activities,” Director of the China Cultural Center in Malta Yuan Yuan told China Today in an exclusive interview. The Chinese zodiac exhibition, Spring Festival concert, and film festival are firm fixtures among events that the cultural centre arranges during the Spring Festival season. After more than two decades, the ‘Happy Chinese New Year’ programme is among the most eagerly anticipated multicultural festival events in Malta. In 2024, Malta celebrated the Year of the Dragon with master artisans from Shenzhen showcasing Chinese intangible cultural heritage art such as exquisite silverware, Jiama (traditional woodcut print) and colourful embroidery of the Yi ethnic group in Valletta. Maltese and Chinese volunteers also sashayed in Hanfu, traditional Chinese garments, wowing the onlookers in the capital city.

At a hot pot restaurant in Beijing in early February, 2024, a facemask-changing performance artist interacts with a customer.

“It’s exciting to see that these cultural exchanges instill new vitality into the people-to-people bond.” Yuan observed that people can, through various types of cultural exchanges, better distinguish – and hence accept, understand, and respect – cultural differences, which helps to dispel misunderstanding and prejudice. Such mutual understanding underpins the bilateral relations and facilitates exchanges in other fields.

People throng the ancient commercial block in Qianmen area, Beijing, which is now festooned with decorations for the Spring Festival on February 8, 2024.