A celebration for a time of promise
Spring Festival enjoys a growing global profile with recent UNESCO heritage recognition. Zhao Xu explores the cultural roots of this age-old tradition and how it has evolved over time.
To preserve that heritage is the highest form of veneration for one's forebears, a tradition deeply embedded in the customs of Chinese New Year celebrations.
In Dream of the Red Mansion, widely regarded as one of the most accomplished novels of ancient China, author Cao Xueqin (1715-1763) vividly depicts the intricate rituals of ancestral worship performed by a prominent family of the era. Humbler households followed modest practices, offering food and incense to painted portraits of their ancestors displayed on a long table that served as an altar.
In China's rural villages, both past and present, these rites are often conducted in communal temples dedicated to shared ancestors.
It's worth noting that ancestral temples were often the first structures built by early Chinese immigrants, some of whom crossed the Pacific in engineless junk boats nearly 150 years ago.
On America's West Coast, where early Chinese immigrants endured severe forms of racism — including nearly 500 anti-Chinese riots in the 1870s and 1880s, mostly in California — the temples served as spiritual sanctuaries.
For these communities, celebrating Chinese New Year constituted a profound expression of cultural identity, a means of resisting assimilation.
