Also called Chinese New Year, Spring Festival, Chunjie, Seollal, Tết
The household customs of the Lunar New Year that sweep out the old year's bad luck and welcome the new: cleaning before the day, hiding the broom on it, red couplets at the door, the fu character hung upside down, a reunion dinner and red envelopes.
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Take care: Firecrackers are illegal or restricted in many cities, so use red decorations, drums or a recording instead. Keep candles and incense on fireproof stands away from paper decorations. Customs differ by family and region, so follow your host's household rules when you visit.
Korean families hold an ancestral rite, then younger family members make a deep formal bow called sebae to their elders and receive money and words of advice. Everyone eats tteokguk, rice-cake soup, and with it grows a year older in the traditional way of counting age.
Uses: Rice-cake soup, Hanbok
In Vietnam the first visitor to cross the threshold after midnight sets the luck for the year, so families often invite someone of good character and a well-matched zodiac sign to be first in. Homes are decked with peach blossom in the north and yellow apricot blossom in the south.
Uses: Peach or apricot blossom, Bánh chưng rice cakes
About a week before New Year, on Little New Year, families send the Kitchen God back to Heaven to report on the household, smearing sweets on his image or offering candy so his report is sweet, then burning the old paper image and putting up a new one on New Year.
Uses: Kitchen God print, Malt sugar or sweets
Chinese New Year begins on the new moon between 21 January and 20 February and runs to the Lantern Festival fifteen days later. Legend says the beast Nian was driven off by red paper and loud noise, which is why red and firecrackers belong to the season. Spring couplets are traced to Meng Chang, ruler of the Later Shu kingdom in the 10th century, who had verses written on peach wood for his door; by the Song dynasty they were widespread. Money for children in the Song dynasty became today's red envelopes.
A Ming dynasty book records families eating dumplings at dawn on New Year's Day with silver hidden in one or two for a year of fortune. Interim president Yuan Shikai proposed the name Spring Festival in 1914. Official celebrations were suppressed in China during the Cultural Revolution, and the holiday was restored by 1980. Many customs are word puns: fish for surplus, the upside-down fu for fortune arriving.
Written charms on red or yellow paper, or on peach wood, pasted at the door or carried, to keep harmful spirits out of a home in Chinese tradition.
The first visitor to cross the threshold after midnight on New Year sets the household's luck for the year, so they arrive with gifts of coal, bread, salt and drink.
Before Chinese New Year, families send the Kitchen God back to Heaven to report on the household, first smearing honey or malt candy on his lips so his report will be sweet, then burning his paper image.
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