Fabulous Festivals

Fabulous Festivals

The majority of China's holidays and festivals are calculated according to the lunar calendar and can vary by as much as a few weeks from year to year. Check a lunar calendar or with the China International Travel Service for dates more specific than those below.

Chinese New Year,China's most celebrated and important holiday, follows the lunar calendar and falls between mid-January to mid-February. Also called Spring Festival, it gives the Chinese an official three-day—or longer—holiday to visit family and relatives, eat special meals, and set off firecrackers to celebrate the New Year and its respective Chinese zodiac animal. Students and teachers get up to four weeks off, and some factory workers don't have to work for as long as a month. It's a particularly crowded time to travel in China. Many offices and services reduce their hours or close altogether.

The Spring Lantern Festival marks the end of the Chinese New Year on the 15th day of the first moon.

Not so much a holiday as a day of worship, Qing Ming (literally, "clean and bright"), or Remembrance of the Dead, gathers relatives at the graves of the deceased on April 5th to clean the surfaces and leave fresh flowers.

Labor Day falls on May 1, and is another busy travel time, as the Chinese get a weeklong holiday from work.

The Dragon Boat Festival,on the fifth day of the fifth moon (falling sometime in May or June), celebrates the national hero Qu Yuan, who drowned himself in the third century in protest against the corrupt emperor. Legend has it that people attempted to rescue him by throwing rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves into the river and frightening fish away by beating drums. Today crews in narrow dragon boats race to the beat of heavy drums, and rice wrapped in bamboo leaves is consumed.

On October 1st, National Day celebrates the founding of the People's Republic of China. Tiananmen Square fills up with a hefty crowd of visitors on this official holiday. This is a weeklong holiday, and the city fills with domestic tourists from around the country.

Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth moon, which generally falls in mid-September to mid-October. The Chinese spend this time gazing at the full moon and exchanging tasty moon cakes (so named because they resemble the full moon) filled with meat, red-bean paste, lotus paste, salted egg, date paste, and other delectable surprises.