Mengting Liu
For Chinese people, Chinese New Year or Spring Festival is the most important event in the lunar calendar. The celebration of Chinese New Year lasts about half a month, from New Year’s Eve (Chuxi) to the 15th day of the first month (Lantern Festival) on the lunar calendar.
During the celebration of Chinese New Year, many characters are used to represent people’s good wishes. “福” (Fu) is the most frequently used character, which means “Wish you a fortune.” Another example is “招財進寶” (Zhao Cai Jin Bao), which means “ushering in wealth and prosperity”. Interestingly, this blessing is usually written in the form of compound Chinese character.
Blessings such as “恭喜发财” (Gong Xi Fa Cai), “财源广进” (Cai Yuan Guang Jin), etc. all convey the same meaning as “招財進寶”. Other blessings, such as “吉祥如意” (Ji Xiang Ru Yi), “心想事成” （Xin Xiang Shi Cheng), “一帆风顺” ( Yi Fan Feng Shun), etc., all mean “ wish you good luck and everything will go smoothly as you wish.” These good wishes basically convey the same idea, however take different ways to express, often used as greetings for people to start or end a conversation during Spring Festival. These characters or blessings are also printed or written on red scrolls in the form of calligraphy, stuck on or around doors as decorations.
Lantern festival signifies the end of new year celebration. It is a tradition that riddles are printed on lantern for people to solve. Families or friends will gather together to guess the answer from a word, phrase or poem, which provides an opportunity for people to communicate and strengthen their relationships.
