Celebrating Chinese New Year.

Before I came to live in China, I always thought Chinese New Year was celebrated with fire crackers and hanging red lanterns.

Firecrackers and red lanterns.

And I wasn't entirely incorrect because they do indeed do those things ...

Festive decorations!

... but there's also a lot more I never knew about, so I thought you'd be interested in all the other stuff about how they do The Festive Season up in China:

Guangzhou Shopping District,
family gift-buying
two days before Golden Week.

Although they exchange gifts, China doesn't have a Santa Claus as such ...

This guy soooo doesn't get it!

... but lately they've chosen one of their own gods who vaguely fits the bill ...

Don't know his name!

... and adapted him to fill the function ...

Chinese Santa!

... and they now dress someone up to hand around the gifts.

Chinese New Year is also known as Spring Festival or Golden Week and the celebration lasts a full week and everything shuts down so folk can return home to their families. Yup, it's all about families, exchanging gifts, eating enormous meals and having Grandma tell you repeatedly the thousand ways you've disappointed her in the last twelve months.

Yes folks, the Chinese too have relatives who traditionally spoil every festive occasion, and so if the answer is "Jewish mothers, Irish fathers and Chinese grandmothers!", the question must be "Who ruins every family gathering with their endless carping, moaning, belittling and pestering?!

Golden Week hasn't yet started
and already he's looking slightly exasperated.

The gifts exchanged are usually gold, to represent the wealth you want to have in the upcoming year ... In this case, it's chocolate ...

But mandarins and oranges are also good.

Golden tokens.
It's a feng shui thing.

(Love this shot of "harried mum"
trying to get it all organised in time.)

... although this is now changing and they are becoming more Christmas Present-y.

Chinese also have a tree. In this case, it's a cherry blossom and you buy it with buds intact and decorate it with lai see - little red envelopes - that contain your wishes for the upcoming year, and then, over the course of the Golden Week, you watch flowers unfurl, representing the flowering of all your hopes and dreams. Nice, huh!

Cherry-blossom wish tree.

Like with Christmas trees, you usually buy wish trees from street vendors ...

Wish trees for sale.

... all trussed and furled, and you cart them home ...

Not as bulky as a fir tree!

... and decorate them there. Everyone in your household gets to write wishes and place them into the lai see, and sticking them onto the tree is a big festive moment in itself.

At hotels, guests can also do it.

You also spend the Golden Week dressed like Emperors, Empresses, Princesses and Princes, representing how you'd like to be treated the entire year. I have a lot of gorgeous photos of various families on outings dressed like this, but I can only find this one.

A celebrating family.

I must say I really didn't like seeing all these American multi-nationals trying to cash in on this tradition by introducing their own versions of "Princess" ...

American Princess!

... because China, with it's looonnnggg dynastic history has more than enough styles of "Princess" to be going along with ...

... but I did adore the spin on the tradition that this girl put onto it ...

Yo! You go, Girl!

It's also a tradition to usher in the New Year with healthy growing plants to represent what you want to see growing in your life. Mostly, these plants are gold, representing wealth.

This one has also become a wish-tree.

... and there's a huge rush for gold plants, particularly oranges and mandarin trees, in the days leading up to Golden Week.

You get these from street vendors too.

However, if you want to also grow your "prestige" the colour is purple, and therein lies the problem. Do you know how difficult it is to find gold plants and purple plants that actually look good together?

This combo sooo doesn't work!

I spent hours hiking the streets of Guangzhou looking at all the different potplant combos and all the ways folk had attempted to put the two colours together, trying to find a combination that actually worked. I should do a post on all the ways they got it wrong! (Yup, will do that tomorrow!)

However, this one is the closest anyone got to getting it right:

Doesn't this pop!

So let's hope that whoever has this good an eye for colour has a great deal of growing wealth and prestige in the upcoming Nui Year!