Source: CCTV.com

01-24-2009 08:44

China's biggest holiday, Spring Festival, is just around the corner. And people across the country are preparing for the celebrations with high hopes for the coming Year of the Ox.

In Beijing one of the city's traditional shopping zones -- Wangfujing -- is launching an unconventional temple fair.

In Beijing one of the city's traditional shopping zones -- Wangfujing -- is launching an unconventional temple fair. Starting on Friday, the whole street will be converted into a carnival site decorated with banners, lanterns, and various greetings. Meanwhile, shopping malls will host demonstrations of age-old Spring Festival traditions. Organizers say that the temple fair will last through the Lantern Festival -- the fifteenth day of the first lunar month in early February.

Further north in the border province of Heilongjiang, people of the Man ethnic group are ushering in the Lunar New Year in distinctive ways. Besides posting couplets on door frames and doing spring cleaning, a lot of effort is going toward preparing the Chinese New Year Eve feast. The feast will include dumplings, sticky steamed buns with bean fillings and a range of traditional delicacies, along with local brew. Also, rehearsals are already underway for the Spring Festival parade.

shopping malls will host demonstrations of age-old Spring Festival traditions.

Down in central China's Hunan province, the ethnic Miao group is also welcoming the Lunar New Year. Villagers in the mountains are busy making the traditional Spring Festival food -- Ziba... a type of cake made of sticky rice. The Ziba cake is a necessity for celebrations. It's one of the essential foods for the festive season. And the traditional cake also figures prominently among the offerings in honoring ancestors.

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Editor:Zhao Yanchen