Today marks the first day of the year of the rooster for the
Chinese community and begins an over two-week period of
celebrations and family reunions.
Chinese New Year is popularly called the Spring Festival, and
the festivities last for 15 days. It is also referred to as the
lunar new year because it starts with the new moon on the first day
of the new year and ends with the full moon 15 days later. The
celebration of the Lantern Festival marks the end of the
festivities and is celebrated at night with lantern displays and
parades.
“There are a lot of legends associated with the term
“˜new year’ and a lot of versions of the meaning. The
beginning of spring and the celebration of the Chinese New Year
happen very closely together,” said Cindy Fan, a geography
professor at UCLA.
The year 4703 begins today, according to the Chinese
calendar.
The lunar new year is celebrated in other Asian countries as
well. In Vietnam the lunar new year is called “Tet” and
is celebrated at the same time and in a similar way to the Chinese
New Year.
“It is typically termed as Chinese New Year because it was
celebrated by the Chinese first. The American culture seems to
associate the new year more with the Chinese because it originated
there,” said Thuy Huynh, a member of the Vietnamese Student
Union and the Asian Pacific Coalition.
The Vietnamese also follow the same lunar calendar as the
Chinese.
“Vietnamese calendars have lunar dates underneath the
solar ones,” Huynh said.
Though other Asian countries also celebrate the lunar new year,
the festivities vary depending on the culture.
“The dates are similar but the celebrations reflect the
different cultures. One thing they all have in common, however, is
that it’s a time for families to get together,” Fan
said.
The beginning of the lunar calendar also coincides very closely
to the beginning of spring.
“The lunar calendar is older than the solar calendar and
has to do with agriculture,” said Professor Richard Baum,
director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies.
Planting and harvesting correspond to the phases of the moon, he
said.
The Gregorian calendar, or solar calender, corresponds to the
seasonal year.
Though China now uses the Gregorian calendar for daily purposes,
a lunar calendar is used for determining festivals.
“The lunar calendar is like a holiday calendar. It stopped
being used with the emergence of the new Republic of China in 1912
and was replaced with the solar calendar,” said Richard
Gunde, assistant director for the Center for Chinese Studies.
The Chinese calendar is an example of a lunisolar calendar. It
is based on exact astronomical observations of the longitude of the
sun and the phases of the moon. The lunar cycle is 29.5 days long,
but every few years ““ seven years out of a 19-year cycle
““ an extra month, or “leap month” is inserted to
keep up with the solar calendar. This is why the Chinese New Year
falls on a different date each year, Fan said.
“The actual occasion is called the lunar new year and the
holiday is referred to as “˜Spring Festival.’ It is one
of three golden weeks in China where everyone has the day
off,” Baum said.
In Chinese tradition the first year of the Yellow Emperor was
2698 B.C. This year is sometimes used as a marker for the origin of
the Chinese calendar.
“To make it more difficult, the Chinese counted years
according to the reign of emperors,” Gunde said. “This
was very complicated because the average person had no reason to
remember what happened 300 years ago.”
The Chinese people would try different methods of determining
dates.
“One type of calendar used was based on the 12-year cycle
of the Chinese zodiac, another had to do with the 10 heavenly stems
and 12 earthly branches, and a third way was according to
“˜nodes.’ The year was divided into 24 nodes and various
things such as seasonal change, the beginning of spring, white dew
or the awakening of insects determined the start of each
node,” Gunde said. The lunar calendar is “just a
tradition and today people can’t even compute it,” he
added.
Though celebrations of the Chinese New Year vary, the underlying
message is one of peace and happiness for family members and
friends.
“It is like a combination of Christmas and
Thanksgiving,” Baum reflected.