Lunar New Year's Eve
Papercuts made from lucky red paper are often pasted in windows and on doors to celebrate
Spring Festival. Papercutting is an extremely popular Chinese folk art.
Papercuts usually draw their subject matter from legend, opera, and the twelve
animals of the Chinese zodiac. Bold and expressive, they depict a range of lucky
themes and beautiful dreams, adding color and verve to the celebratory spirit of
Spring Festival.
The character "福" fu means happiness and good fortune. It is as often used as
a decoration during Spring Festival, expressing the hope for good fortune and a
bright future in the coming year. In order to emphasize the significance of this
character, it is often pasted on the door upside down. This is meant to cause
visitors to remark, "Your fu is upside down," which is an exact homonym for the
auspicious phrase, "good fortune has arrived."
In addition to door gods, Spring Festival couplets, New Year pictures, and
papercuts, many families also paste up special decorations known as menjian on
Lunar New Year's Eve for good luck. Made out of red or colored paper, these
decorations consist of papercuts plus auspicious sayings, with a fringed bottom.
Today, instead of the traditional menjian, many people put up "Chinese knots," a type of decoration made out of red cord tied
into lucky designs.
Making sacrifices to the ancestors is one of the most important folk customs
of Spring Festival. Traditionally, households prepared for New Year's Eve by
bringing their family's genealogical records, ancestral portraits, and memorial
tablets to the ancestral hall, where the altar was prepared with incense and offerings. In some
regions, offerings were prepared for the deities of Heaven and Earth as well as
for the ancestors. In other areas, obeisance was made to the Jade Emperor (the highest deity in the folk pantheon), and the Queen Mother of the West (wife of the Jade Emperor). The offerings, known as
"offerings to Heaven and Earth," consisted of mutton, five types of cooked
dishes, five colors of snacks, five bowls of rice, two date cakes, and a large
steamed wheat-flour bun. The rite was conducted by the head of the household.
After burning three bundles of incense and bowing to the ancestors, prayers were
offered for a fruitful harvest in the coming year. Finally, paper images of
money were burned, the smoke carrying the household's prayers and salutations to
Heaven. These Spring Festival rituals were a way of wishing the ancestors and
deities a Happy New Year.
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