新年英语资料

Spring Festival is the most important holiday for Chinese people. Excitement and happiness are palpable this time of the year， and they reach the peak on lunar new year‘s eve.

Chinese New Year (Simplified Chinese: 春节, or 农历新年; Traditional Chinese: 春节, or 农历新年; pinyin: Chūnjié, or Nónglì xīnnián), or the Spring Festival/Lunar New Year is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. The Chinese New Year period lasts for 15 days, beginning on the first day of the first lunar month (正月 Zheng Yue) of the Chinese calendar. The holiday period ends with 元宵节 （Yuan Xiao Jie), on the 15th day of the festival. It is possible that the beginning of the year began with month 1 during the Xia Dynasty, month 12 during the Shang Dynasty, and month 11 during the Zhou Dynasty in China, but intercalary months were added after month 12 during both the Shang Dynasty according to surviving oracle bones and the Zhou Dynasty according to Sima Qian. The first Emperor of China Qin Shi Huang changed the beginning of the year to month 10 in 221 BC. Whether the New Year was celebrated at the beginning of these months or at the beginning of month 1 or both is unknown. In 104 BC, Emperor Wu established month 1 as the beginning of the year where it remains. According to legend, in ancient China, nian ("Nyan"), a man-eating beast from the mountains, could infiltrate houses silently to prey on humans. The people later learned that nian was sensitive to loud noises and the color red, so they scared it away with explosions, fireworks and the liberal use of the color red. So guo nian actually means surviving the nian. These customs led to the first New Year celebrations. Chuxi or 除夕 in Mandarin Chinese. Chu means "get rid of" and xi is the day of the legendary man-eating beast, nian, that preys once a year on New Year Eve. When nian arrived, people used firecrackers to scare him away. Once nian ran away, people joined together to celebrate for another year of safe life. Celebrated internationally in areas with large populations of ethnic Chinese. Chinese New Year is considered to be a major holiday for the Chinese as well as ethnic groups who were strongly influenced by Chinese culture. This includes Japanese, Koreans, Miao (Chinese Hmong), Mongolians, Vietnamese, Tibetans, the Nepalese and the Bhutanese (see Losar). Chinese New Year is also the time when the largest human migration takes place when overseas Chinese all around the world return home on the eve of Chinese New Year to have reunion dinners with their families.

The Chinese New Year is now popularly known as the Spring Festival because it starts from the Begining of Spring (the first of the twenty-four terms in coodination with the changes of Nature). Its origin is too old to be traced. Several explanations are hanging around. All agree, however, that the word Nian, which in modern Chinese solely means "year", was originally the name of a monster beast that started to prey on people the night before the beginning of a new year.One legend goes that the beast Nian had a very big mouth that would swallow a great many people with one bite. People were very scared. One day, an old man came to their rescue, offering to subdue Nian. To Nian he said, "I hear say that you are very capable, but can you swallow the other beasts of prey on earth instead of people who are by no means of your worthy opponents?" So, it did swallow many of the beasts of prey on earth that also harrassed people and their domestic animals from time to time.After that, the old man disappeared riding the beast Nian. He turned out to be an immortal god. Now that Nian is gone and other beasts of prey are also scared into forests, people begin to enjoy their peaceful life. Before the old man left, he had told people to put up red paper decorations on their windows and doors at each year's end to scare away Nian in case it sneaked back again, because red is the color the beast feared the most.From then on, the tradition of observing the conquest of Nian is carried on from generation to generation. The term "Guo Nian", which may mean "Survive the Nian" becomes today "Celebrate the (New) Year" as the word "guo" in Chinese having both the meaning of "pass-over" and "observe". The custom of putting up red paper and firing fire-crackers to scare away Nian should it have a chance to run loose is still around. However, people today have long forgotten why they are doing all this, except that they feel the color and the sound add to the excitement of the celebration.