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Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year
or Spring Festival or the
Lunar New
Year is the most important
of
the traditional
Chinese holidays.
The festival proper begins on the
first day of
the first lunar month.
Food
is one of the most important aspect of
the
Spring
Festival, and huge amounts are bought,
prepared and eaten in Chinese households.
Many of the foods served at New Year have
symbolic meanings. Some foods have a name
which sounds the same as a character with a lucky
meaning and for some foods theirshape and colour are emblems of words special to the Spring Fe
stival such as happiness,
prosperity fortune or luck.
In Northern China, people usually eat Jiaozi or dumplings shaped like a crescent
moon. It is said that dumplings were first known in China some 1,600 years ago.
In Chinese pronunciation Jiaozi means midnight or the end and the beginning of time.
According to historical records, people from both north and south ate dumplings
on Chinese New Year's Day. Perhaps because Southern China produced more rice than
any other area, gradually, southern people had many more other choices on New Year's
Day.
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