元旦已过，腊八已过，春节还会远吗？独在异乡为异客的你，如何向中国人民的老朋友们介绍中国的传统佳节春节呢？今天我们悉尼文波PTE就为大家准备了一篇关于春节的文章，还不赶快读起来！

Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival in China, is China's most important traditional festival. It is also the most important celebration for families, and a week of official public holiday.  In 2017, the first day of the Chinese New Year is on Saturday, 28 January, initiating another year of the rooster.

The main traditional celebrations of the festival include eating reunion dinner with family, giving red envelopes, firecrackers, new clothes, and decorations. More modern celebrations include watching CCTV Spring Festival Gala, instant message greetings, and cyber money gifts.

A Festival for Family – Chinese get together and enjoy family time.

Chinese New Year is a time for families to be together. Wherever they are, people come home to celebrate the festival with their families.

The New Year's Eve dinner is called "reunion dinner", and is believed to be the most important meal of the year. Big families of several generations sit around round tables and enjoy the food and time together.

Certain foods are eaten during the festival (especially at the New Year’s Eve dinner) because of their symbolic meanings, based on their names or appearances.

Fish is a must for Chinese New Year as the Chinese word for fish sounds like the word for surplus. Eating fish is believed to bring a surplus of money and good luck in the coming year.

Other Chinese New Year foods include dumplings, spring rolls, glutinous rice cakes, and sweet rice balls.

Decorating Buildings, Houses, and Streets with Lucky Red Items

Every street, building, and house where CNY is celebrated is decorated with red. Red is the main color for the festival, as it is believed to be an auspicious color. Red lanterns hang in streets; red couplets are pasted on doors; banks and official buildings are decorated with red New Year pictures depicting images of prosperity. Most of the decoration is traditionally done on Chinese New Year's Eve.

As 2017 is the year of rooster, decorations related to roosters will be commonly seen. There are red rooster dolls for children and New Year paintings with roosters on.

Firecrackers

Firecrackers are an important element of the festival and are traditionally let off to frighten away ghosts so the New Year could start free of them. Legend has it that long ago there was a monster that terrorised the people, however it was afraid of loud noises, bright lights and the colour red. At midnight on the last day of the old year, these things are used to frighten away the monster for the whole year.

Red Envelopes

Like Christmas in the West, people exchange gifts during the Spring Festival. The most common gifts are red envelopes. Red envelopes have money in, and are given to children and (retired) seniors. It is not a custom to give red envelopes to (working) adults, except by employers. Red envelopes are used in the hope of giving good luck  to the receivers.

App-sent or received red envelopes appeared in recent years, and they soon become the most popular New Year activity among the young. Many young people spend most of their New Year holiday time exchanging cyber money via red envelope apps for fun.

Greeting Each Other on Devices

Sending cell phone messages have become the main way to greet people on Chinese New Year's Eve this decade. In the past people sent New Year cards or called each other to express their good wishes during the Spring Festival.

Now more people use instant messages on WeChat (the most popular social media app in China, like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger in the West) to greet their friends.