Let's talk about Chinese New Year's Eve (chúxī), a very important day in Chinese culture and a very important day for me, a native Chinese, to celebrate.
It's a reunion day for every Chinese family. In most parts of China, grand family gatherings and dinner banquets are held to celebrate. Since it's the last meal of the "old year", the entire family must sit together and enjoy traditional family dishes (which almost always includes dumplings (jiaozi) that the whole family would gather and make from scratch starting in the morning). Younger members of the family will kneel and kowtow to older members of the family, wishing them a happy new year and receiving red pouches containing money for new year's gifts. Food and drink offerings are made to ancestors. Door gods and kitchen gods are honored.
It's around this time when you see lots and lots of red and yellow colors everywhere across China, the auspicious colors of joy, luck, happiness, wealth, prosperity, and abundance, to bring in all the good things for the new year to come.
There's an ancient myth of a demon who lived in the western mountains, who wandered the land on the last day of every year, and who would make any human who came cross it ill. The demon had one weakness, which was that it was afraid of the sounds of bamboos. So the ancient Chinese would burn bamboos to keep the demon away from their homes on Chinese New Year's Eve. Nowadays, instead of bamboos, firecrackers would be set off to ward off evil and as a part of the celebration. The demon was said to be named "Xi". "Chuxi" literally translates into "to be rid of xi", which apparently is what people do on Chinese New Year's Eve: get rid of that demon.
The Spring Festival Gala (similar idea as the Vienna New Year's Concert) is an annual New Year's show that's broadcast live on China Central Television on Chinese New Year's Eve, with various artistic performances and celebrity appearances. Preparations for it take up to 6 months. Since the 1980s, when more and more Chinese families began to have televisions in their homes, the Spring Festival Gala has become a crucial part of Chinese New Year's Eve traditions. Family members will watch TV and eat dumplings together until midnight to welcome another new year.
