一年一度的中國年又來了，咱們的David老師眼中看到的中國年是怎樣的呢？

看看David説中國年！

Spring Festival Travel

During Spring Festival, which is China's most important traditional festival, an enormous number of Chinese return to their home towns. That creates a transportation market with Chinese characteristics─the largest human migration in the world. No country can rival China in terms of the massive passenger flow─China's passenger flow hit 2 billion trips during the 2006 Spring Festival holiday.

Here is another amazing statistic:                      

• 10 million of these people traveled to and from Shanghai over a two-week period.  Just think: It’s as if the entire population of New York City decided to visit Shanghai over a two-week period.

The number of foreigners visiting China during the Spring Festival

In 2006 over 65 million visitors came to see China over a seven-day period. That's 104 visitors arriving in China every second of every minute round the clock for the entire seven days. 

And just think:  That’s as if the entire population of France ? men, women and children ? ALL decided to visit China during a one-week period.

Some more amazing Spring Festival statistics:

l         Fireworks.  In Shanghai alone, residents spent about 200 million RMB is spend on fireworks in Shanghai.  However, only 65 million were spent on fireworks from a legal source --- which means a lot of illegal fireworks were purchased!

l         Short messages. Nationwide, the number of mobile messages sent during the holiday exceeded 10 billion for the first time in history, up from 9.8 billion during the same period last year, reported the Xinhua News Agency. Just think: this is almost 2 short messages for every man, woman and child on the planet earth!!  The total number of text messages sent on Lunar New Year's Eve, on February 8, through Shanghai Mobile, Shanghai Unicom and Shanghai Telecom are estimated at 135 million, according to the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post.  This would be as if every person in Japan sent a short message to Shanghai.

Spring Festival Taboos

If someone really obeyed every single taboo that has ever been practiced for the Spring Festival, you couldn’t do ANYTHING during those few days!  Here are just a few of the taboos that have arisen around Spring Festival in various parts of China.

l         If anything in the house is broken, the pieces must wrapped up in order not to let the “fortune” slip away.

l         Some places in China believe you should not make noises, fight, quarrel or weep to keep away misfortune. If you cry on New Year's day, you will cry all through the year. Therefore, children are tolerated and are not spanked, even though they are mischievous.

l         There are taboos against taking medicine or sneezing, for it is believed that they can lead to sickness throughout the year.

l         There are taboos against the use of knife; you mustn’t cut things.

l         You must not use scissors, for the same reason, to not cut fortune in half.

l         On yuandan, neither lending and nor giving of money to others is done so that there will be no out-flowing of money during the year.

l         There is also the saying that if a male sleeps in the afternoon, his career will breakdown, and if a female has an afternoon nap, the kitchen will collapse.

l         In the past, there was a superstition that when a person left his house in the New Year, he must take a correct first step. On Yuan Dan, when a person stepped out of his house, he must go in the fortunate direction and avoid the unfortunate direction. Even people of less particularity also consulted Chinese calendar to find out where the fortunate directions and fierce deities were before the first step out of their houses.

l         On New Year's Day, we are not suppose to wash our hair because it would mean we would have washed away good luck for the New Year.

l         It is considered unlucky to greet anyone in their bedroom so that is why everyone, even the sick, should get dressed and sit in the living room.

Special New Year’s foods

l         Lotus seed - signify having many male offspring

l         Ginkgo nut - represents silver ingots

l         Black moss seaweed - is a homonym for exceeding in wealth

l         Dried bean curd is another homonym for fulfillment of wealth and happiness

l         Bamboo shoots - is a term which sounds like "wishing that everything would be well"

l         Fresh bean curd or tofu is not included as it is white and unlucky for New Year as the color signifies death and misfortune.

l         Other foods include a whole fish, to represent togetherness and abundance, and a chicken for prosperity. The chicken must be presented with a head, tail and feet to symbolize completeness.

l         Noodles should be uncut, as they represent long life. 

l         In south China, the favorite and most typical dishes were niangao, sweet steamed glutinous rice pudding and zong zi (glutinous rice wrapped up in reed leaves), another popular delicacy. 

l         In the north, steamed-wheat bread (man tou) and small meat dumplings were the preferred food. The tremendous amount of food prepared at this time was meant to symbolize abundance and wealth for the household.

責編：蘭華