Culture · Festivals
Spring Festival (Chinese New Year)
What it is
Spring Festival (春节, Chūn Jié) is the first day of the lunar new year and the centrepiece of the Chinese calendar. Unlike most public holidays, it is not a single day's observance: the official public holiday runs seven days, but the full social cycle — from preparations to Lantern Festival — extends 15 days from new year's eve. The period is called Chūnyùn (春运, 'spring movement') when referring to its transport effects, because hundreds of millions of people travel home simultaneously in what is often cited as the world's largest annual human migration.
The festival's origins are layered. The lunar new year has been observed in some form since at least the Shang dynasty (c.1600–1046 BCE), when divination records mention new year sacrifices. Han-dynasty records document feasting, exorcism rituals and the exchange of good wishes. The specific customs familiar today — red envelopes, door couplets, fireworks, the family reunion meal — evolved across the Tang, Song and Ming dynasties. The fireworks tradition emerged from an older practice of burning bamboo stalks to drive away evil spirits; the explosion of gunpowder rockets gradually replaced the burning bamboo.
Modern Spring Festival combines the commercial and the deeply traditional. Red envelopes are now sent digitally via WeChat as readily as in paper form. The CCTV New Year's Eve gala (春晚, Chūn Wǎn) has been broadcast since 1983 and draws over 700 million viewers — a figure unmatched by any other television event on earth. Yet the core ritual — the family reunion meal on New Year's Eve — remains the festival's unchanged heart, with absent relatives flying across the world to return home for a single dinner.
2026 and 2027 dates
Spring Festival dates are calculated from the first day of the first lunar month:
- 2026: 17 February (Year of the Horse). The official public holiday runs 17–23 February, with New Year's Eve falling on 16 February.
- 2027: 6 February (Year of the Goat). The official public holiday runs 6–12 February.
The period of maximum travel disruption — Chunyun — begins roughly 15 days before New Year's Eve and extends 25 days after. For 2026, this means transport is severely congested from approximately 2 February through 15 March. For 2027, roughly 22 January through 12 March.
Adjacent holiday context: the seventh day of the public holiday is officially a workday in most years, though many offices take the full week. Lantern Festival (元宵节), 15 days after Spring Festival, falls on 4 March 2026 and 20 February 2027 — this is the formal close of the festival season.
Regional variations
The festival's specific expressions vary substantially across China's regions, though the core family-reunion structure is universal.
Beijing and northern China: dumplings (饺子, jiǎozi) are the essential food, eaten on New Year's Eve. The dumpling shape resembles ancient gold ingots — eating them symbolises wealth for the new year. Families wrap dumplings together as a group activity; coins or peanuts are sometimes hidden inside. Temple fairs at Ditan Park and Longtan Park run through the holiday week with traditional games, acrobatics and street food.
Shanghai and Jiangnan: the reunion dinner centres on glutinous rice cakes (年糕, nián gāo — the name is a homophone of 'year higher', meaning progress). Eight-treasure rice (八宝饭), braised pork, and yellow croaker fish feature. Shanghai's City God Temple area and Yu Garden are the main public celebration venues, though crowded.
Guangdong and Hong Kong: lion dances are more prominent here than anywhere else in China — the Cantonese lion-dance tradition is technically demanding and competitive. Red packet culture (利是, lì shì in Cantonese) is equally important here; the phrase 恭喜发财 (Gōng xǐ fā cái) is Cantonese in origin. Hong Kong's Spring Festival firecracker and fireworks display over Victoria Harbour is among Asia's largest.
Sichuan and southwest China: large temple fairs run at Qingyang Palace in Chengdu. Sichuan's traditional New Year food includes glutinous rice cakes and a wide variety of preserved meats (腊肉) cured before the festival.
Fujian and coastal communities: Hokkien traditions include a distinct ceremony on the ninth day of the lunar new year — the birthday of the Jade Emperor — with elaborate incense and sacrifice that often exceeds the new year's eve observance in scale.
Travel impact
The two weeks around Spring Festival are the most challenging travel period in mainland China by a significant margin. Train tickets sell out 30+ days in advance; the 12306 booking system opens sales exactly 30 days ahead and tickets for popular routes sell out within minutes. Flight prices double or triple on the days around new year's eve and day 1.
Tourist sights are crowded with domestic travellers. The Forbidden City hits its daily cap of 80,000 visitors before 9am on the first three days of the holiday. The Great Wall, Huangshan, West Lake and the Bund are similarly overwhelmed.
Major cities — particularly Shanghai and Beijing — experience a counterintuitive quietening on the actual holiday days as residents return to ancestral hometowns. This is the one window when central Shanghai's Bund is relatively uncrowded. Tier-3 cities and rural areas, by contrast, are at their busiest. Many smaller restaurants and local shops close for three to seven days around new year.
The foreign visitor's optimal strategy is to either be in a city on new year's eve and the first two days (for the atmosphere, at the cost of crowds) and then leave, or to avoid the entire period.
What foreigners should know
Greetings: 新年快乐 (Xīn nián kuài lè, 'happy new year') is universally understood. 恭喜发财 (Gōng xǐ fā cái, 'may you be prosperous') is the Cantonese form but widely used. If visiting Tibetan communities during the overlap with Losar, 扎西德勒 (Tashi Delek) is appropriate.
Red envelopes (红包, hóng bāo): if invited to a Chinese family for New Year dinner, bringing red envelopes for the children in the house is considered thoughtful. Amounts: ¥100–¥200 for children you don't know well; even numbers are auspicious; avoid ¥400 (four = death homophone). Crisp new banknotes are traditional — banks offer them in late January. Digital red envelopes via WeChat are acceptable for acquaintances.
Gifts for dinner hosts: wrapped fruit (oranges are auspicious; the word jú shares a root with 'lucky'), tea, or sweets. Avoid clocks (sounds like 'sending someone to death'), pears (sounds like 'separation'), and shoes.
Household rules: if staying with a Chinese family, don't sweep the floor on day 1 — this sweeps luck away. If you break something, say 岁岁平安 (suì suì píng ān — homophone of 'year-year-peace') immediately.
Photography: lion and dragon dances on the streets are fine to photograph. Temple fairs are public; photograph freely. Don't photograph inside private family dinners without permission.
What's open / closed
During the 7-day official holiday: - **Banks and government offices**: closed days 1–3 at minimum; many close for the full 7 days. - **Post offices**: closed. - **Museums and major tourist sights**: generally open but may have reduced hours; timed entry is more strictly enforced. The Forbidden City opens daily during the holiday. - **Restaurants**: tier-1 city restaurants in high-traffic areas stay open. Smaller neighbourhood restaurants and family-run operations close for 3–7 days. Hotel restaurants always open. - **Supermarkets**: open, though hours may be reduced on days 1–2. - **Transport**: trains and flights run on full timetable but are booked solid. Subway systems in major cities operate extended hours on new year's eve. - **WeChat Pay and Alipay**: red envelope sending peaks on midnight of new year's eve — the systems handle billions of transactions.