【正文】 h by the lunar calendar each year,the entire family gets together for a New Year’s Eve dinner,all family members sit together to chat or play games,staying up till early the next the morning people pay New Year calls on relatives to extend the festival,many people also attend traditional recreational activities,such as the lion dance,dragonlantern dance and stiltwalking.Chinese New Years is by far the most wellknown Chinese holiday,and also the most significant to Chinese known as The Spring Festival,observation of the holiday actually begins the day before the beginning of the Lunar mode of celebration varies from province to province,different areas having their own specific below are some of the customs associated with New Years.The day before the Spring Festival,there is a lot of cleaning and preparation to the Kitchen God are monly made in hopes that he will give a good report to the Emperor of night is a special gathering when the whole family get together and eat a particularly large dinner.The following three or four days are public businesses close and time is spent paying formal visits to bring a gift(generally a box of chocolate,nuts,or a tin of cookies)and are given a gift of greater value by the couples give little red packet envelopes to children and unmarried friends when greeted with a phrase wishing them prosperity in the New the majority of the holiday is observed in the first 3 or 4 days of the New Year,the first 10 days of the year are all part of the festival,however in practice this is just additional time to get in visits to this time,many Chinese people take trips to the city or province where they were born.Certain foods take on special names to celebrate the New Year(for example,chicken is called phoenix),visitors are often treated to fruits and seeds,and people buy new clothes.During prosperous times,entirely new furnishings may be the holiday,negative words,such as death,should be fact,gifts of four and the word four arelso often not used because it sounds like the word for death.Lantern FestivalThe 15th day of the first lunar month,the first full moon after the Spring Festival,is the occasion for the Lantern is customary to eat special sweet dumplings called yuanxiao and enjoy displayed lanterns during this ,round balls made of glutinous rice flour stuffed with sugar fillings,symbolize custom of enjoying lanterns at this time of the year dates back to the first century,and has continued to be popular throughout China up to the present this festive night many cities hold lantern fairs to display many exotic and sometimes weirdly shaped multicolored rural areas the local people gather together and enjoy themselves as spectators and participants setting off fireworks,walking on stilts,performing with dragon lanterns,dancing the yangge and other folk dances and playing on swings.Pure Brightness DayPure Brightness Day es around April 5 every was originally a day set aside for people to offer sacrifices to their ancestors,but nowadays it is more customary to visit the tombs of the martyrs of the revolution to pay the time of the festival,the weather has turned warmer and the earth is covered in like to go together to the outskirts of the city to walk in the green grass,fly kites and appreciate the beauty of is why Pure Brightness Day is also called theStepping on Greenery Festival?Dragon Boat FestivalThe Dragon Boat Festival falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar is generally believed that the festival originated to celebrate the memory of the ancient patriotic poet Qu Yuan,a native of the State of Chu during the Warring States Period,repeatedly offered his king proposals aimed at forestalling political ,slandered by treacherous court officials,he was sent into exile by the same king he had tried to 278 .,the capital of the State of Chu was lost to its enemy the State of Qin and Qu Yuan drowned himself in despair on the fifth day of the fifth lunar of the tragedy,the local people living beside the river went out in their boats to try to find his year thereafter on this day people continued to row dragon boats on their local rivers in memory of Qu Yuan’s life and death,throwing sections of bamboo filled with rice into the river as an has it that someone once met Qu Yuan’s spirit on the bank of the river and was told:The food you have given me has all been taken away by the ,you should wrap the rice in bamboo leaves tied with fivecolored are the two things that the dragon is most afraid of?Thus,people began to make zongzi(glutinous rice wrapped in a pyramid shape using bamboo or reed leaves)in memory of Qu ,zongzi is the traditional food for the Dragon Boat Festival.MidAutumn FestivalThe MidAutumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month,the exact middle of autumn,hence the festival’s ancient times,people used to offer elaborately made cakes to the moon spirit on this making this symbolic offering,a family would enjoy eating the cakes festival eventually came to carry the idea of a happy family reunion and the custom has been passed down to this this midautumn night,the full moon is especially whole family may sit together beneath the clear moonlight eating tasty moon cakes and appreciating the beauty of the fully rounded who are far away from their homes that night are only too easily reminded of their families when they look up at the luminous words of the great Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai are often recited on such evenings,even today:I raise my head to gaze at the bright moon,and I drop my head to think of my old home?Ethnic minorities have also retained their own traditional festivals,including the Water Splashing Festival of the Dai people,the Nadam Fair of the Mongolian people,the Torch Festival of the Yi people,the Danu(Never Forget the Past)Festival of the Yao people,the Third Month Fair of the Bai people,the Antiphonal Singing Day of the Zhuang people,and the Tibetan New Year and Onghor(Expecting