Review [Special Review] The Chinese New Year 2017

[stanzhang 3,291]

 

Hello people of Tanki! You may wonder how Chinese people celebrate the New Year in China, or something like: what traditions do people have or what food do they eat? Well, in this article you will find more about ancient tales of the Chinese mythology and all the goodies that we have during those celebrations!

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The Chinese New Year will fall on Saturday January 28, 2017!

 

 

History of the twelve Zodiacs:

 

First thing first, here is a small story about how the 12 Zodiacs were created.

 

Once upon a time the cat and the rat were neighbors and best buddies, they often worked together and they supported each other very well. One day, the Jade Emperor ordered that animals would be designated as calendar signs so he organized a race and the twelve that arrived first would be selected. The cat, often chasing all night, slept during the morning so he asked his friend to wake him up so he could be on time. However on the next morning, the rat was so excited that he forgot to wake up the cat! He joined the others in the race and he saw the tiger, the ox, the pig, the dog and much more animals but they were all faster than the rat. Then he got the smart idea to go hide on the ox that was first at that time. When the ox was so close from the Jade palace, the vivid rat slid in front of him and snatched the first place. He became the first animal of the Chinese zodiac, followed by the ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and the pig. Unfortunately for the cat who woke up late, he did not make the top 12. Ever since that day, the cat started to hate the rat and began to hunt him down ever since.  

 

 

 

Each animal represents a specific year thus each 12 years the cycle starts again.

Since 2016 was the year of the Monkey, 2017 will be the year of the Rooster. Referring to the picture below, you can find the animal that you are assigned to by looking at your birth year and voila!

 

 

The Chinese calendar uses the Gregorian calendar. Each Chinese New Year is calculated by the first full moon day and it happens during January 21^st and February 20^th. This year, it will fall on January 28^th, 2017.

 

How do we prepare?

 

Now let’s get into details how the celebration starts.

 

First thing, you need to start by cleaning up everything. This is not the most exciting thing to do but many believe that this process washes away the misfortune and the bad luck. People want to say farewell to last year and start a new one!

When the house is fresh and elegant, people can start to decorate it with red objects.

 

Why red everywhere?

 

In China, there is another ancient tale where each time when the New Year arrives, a horrible monster called Nian comes to Chinese villages to eat people, essentially children, and destroys houses. With time, people found out such creature was afraid of noise and of the color red hence why everyone started to put red decorations in their home. They wear red clothes and set firecrackers on the New Year’s Eve to scare that monster away which never came back again. Nowadays, red in China symbolizes luck and wards away evil spirits.

 

Decorating the house:

 

Now let us get into details about how we decorate our houses. Approximately one week before the New Year, houses are ornated with red lanterns, paintings, paper-cuttings on windows and red couplets which will include drawings of rooster for year 2017. We all hope this will bring luck to our family. The most popular of those red couplets is a diamond shaped paper with a red background and the word ‘’fu/福’’ which means ‘’luck/ happiness/prosperity’’ which are usually painted upside down. When bottomed up, it means ‘’coming.’’ This craft means ‘’luck is coming’’ and we stick that on our front door. Also we can find beside the ‘’fu’’ a pair of lines of stanza written on red paper of course. Long time ago, those characters were handwritten but with the development of machinery, we now buy those crafts in store.

 

 

We can also find lanterns as well; their shell are made out of red paper and sometimes are comprised of a candle for illumination.

 

 

People are also getting new clothes mostly for children to get a fresh look for the New Year.

 

New Year Eve dinner:

 

The New Year Eve dinners are often in homes of the grandparents, usually every member of the family is there. We gather together around a table and there are so many goodies to eat! It is a very copious dinner with a lot of significations so let us get into it.

 

We always find fish in the dinner, homophone of surplus in Chinese.

 

 

With some delicious dumplings; they are made like ancient Chinese golden and silver ingots and meant to bring good fortune. For fun, we can even hide a coin in one of them to bring extra good luck to the person that finds it.

 

 

 

There are also spring rolls; it has its name because Chinese people eat it during the Spring Festival, aka Chinese New Year. It is made of meat and vegetables wrapped with thin dough that we fry.

 

 

For dessert, we are having a sticky cake made of glutinous rice sweet in taste. From the name ‘’Nian Gao/年糕’’ (sticky and cake) it is homophone of "year" and "high" which brings us to the definition of a high expectations for the upcoming year. There is a second way to cook it to make it a meal using non glutinous rice. Depending on each region of China which may have different traditions.

 

 

For the last course we can also have white rice balls, made of glutinous rice with a sweet sesame filling. First it can appear very slippy and in your mouth it sticks a little bit. Those were originally made for the Chinese Lantern Festival but now we also eat them during the New Year Eve dinner! Just like the sticky cake, there are two versions of the rice balls from which we can find salty ones filled with meat instead of sesame.

 

 

On the table we can find noodles as well and those are made as long as possible in terms of length to symbolize a long living life.

 

 

At last, people eat round shaped golden color food such as oranges or clementine.

 

 

Red envelopes:

 

During or before the dinners (yes you will be invited to all sorts of dinners not only on the New Year’s Eve), elders offer young-lings red packets to wish them good luck for the next year. On those red envelopes there is often a printed zodiac of the next year with the words ‘’恭喜发财’’ which means ‘’Have a prosperous New Year!’’ We can find a ‘’good’’ amount of money in there from those offers by our parents. But the red parcels that you are really looking for are from your grandparents which give so much more money (Getting into 3 digit numbers) if you know what I mean :ph34r: .

 

 

When we receive that, we thank the elders but it is very impolite to open this in front of them. You must wait all dinner to know the sum that they gave you.

 

 

When New Year arrives:

 

After the dinner, the children usually wait until midnight and set up firecrackers and my goodness those are really loud! In China, you can find a set of 1000 firecrackers or even more and make them all crack together; I can assure you that is a pretty big mess (especially for the people that clean everything up). We can hear boom, crack and bang all night, do not even try to sleep.

 

 

People also set up fireworks and those are insanely fun to set up with such vivid colors. There are so many choices! Between normal fireworks, rockets that can go up real high, roman candles; it is like a stick that shoots small fireworks that you can take with your hand which comes in various options. Unfortunately in some countries there are laws that forbid the usage of firecrackers and fireworks due to noise and pollution. Instead you can buy a set of electric firecrackers but they are less enjoyable than the real ones. 

 

 

Celebrating the New Year:

 

During the next day, in the street we can find lion and dragon dances often performed together. The lion dance is executed with a set of two people hidden inside a lion disguise. The lion is made out of fur and also has a very long tail from which are often attached bells. In addition, such disguise comprises eyes moving right and left, teeth and a tongue that sticks out. It also has a broad forehead and curled lips. One person is shaking the head and moves the front paws while the second person is hidden behind and only moves the back paws. It may look simple to do but it is actually very hard since coordination and rhythm is really important to let the disguise behave like a real animal. They jump, roll, stand up and turn while the second person cannot see anything from behind.

 

 

The dragon dance is a traditional dance performed by a group of people manipulating a long and flexible dragon with sticks fixed on different parts of the dragon. The dragon looks like a gigantic snake with a head and a tail floating in the air and the longer it is the more spectacular it will be. This dance, just like the lion dance, is extremely hard to perform. The timing between the members are crucial; the head guides the body and it must succeed in a smooth way as a person guides the dragon with a sphere. The team swings, twists and goes into spiral formations with the dragon. The heavy weight does not really help which makes it extremely hard to maneuver.

 

 

 

In game celebrations:

 

Tanki Online does not really celebrate the Chinese New Year. They celebrated it once in 2011 with the following paint:

Name: Chinese New Year — 2011 Description: The paint was issued to all the tanks to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Date: 03.02.2011 Source: wiki

Here is a replica of the paint applied on a XT tank with current graphics.

 

 

 

        

Here are the flags from the decorations of that event. On these flags, we can see a magnificent golden dragon in a S-shape since it was the year of the dragon in 2011.

 

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I hope you enjoyed my article about the Chinese New Year also called the Spring Festival. It is the most important holiday in China as the whole celebration will last for 15 days and during that time people visit their relatives and pay tribute to their ancestors. If you ever go to China, I would definitively recommend you to taste the food, some may look weird but are extremely delicious. Thanks for reading my article and please leave your comments below! Before leaving one thing I want to say: 新年快乐!

 

[stanzhang 3,291]

After My article I decided to interview how he and his family celebrates the New Year.

 

@stanzhang: Hello darknessofshadowstar, can you please introduce yourself? Which zodiac animal are you assigned to? 

 

: Hey, I'm Darknessofshadowstar - a 16 year old Australian guy, who's been playing this game since 2011 and joined the forum since 2013. My favourite hobbies probably will be binge watching movies and shows during late nights, playing card games and sleight of hands (magic). But other times I am mostly studying hard for my last year of high school before I attend university. My Zodiac animal I am assigned to is the year of the dragon. Similar personality to me, in some way.

 

@stanzhang: What Chinese New Year traditions does your family have?

 

:

New Year's Eve Dinner: We are invited by other family members to dinner, which is mostly held at home instead of restaurants.  But we have range of dishes to eat but the most common and important dish is the fish.

Red Packet / Envelope: Most common and well known tradition. It contains real money (the amount depends on how generous they are) given out to other family members. How it goes in my family tradition is that after dinner or before any member leaves the house, we hand out the Red Envelope. 

Decoration: My family will decorate the house to welcome the New Year but they wouldn’t over do the decoration. Most of it are in red colour.

 

@stanzhang: Does your family prepare any special Chinese New Year dishes?

 

: Yes, of course. My family's special dishes they prepare would be fish, dumpling, spring rolls, niangao, and good fortune fruit (it’s not a dish but it is worth mentioning).

 

@stanzhang: Is there any organized event in your city or its surroundings for the Chinese New Year? If yes what do they do/ perform?

 

: Yes, each year my city and surrounding local areas organize some sort of events to help us celebrate.

 

Open New Year markets: a temporary market will be setup to mainly sell New Year goods, such as clothing, fireworks, decorations, food, and small arts. The market is usually decorated with a large amount of lanterns. 

Lion / Dragon Dance: Legends say having a lion grace your premises (and presenting with red packets filled with money) is said to bring you luck for the rest of the year.

Fireworks: In the city, the mayor would organize 12:00 pm fireworks, fireworks to drive away the evil. 

Marching Parade and Festivals: In the city, the main square would have marching parades of themes related to the Chinese New Year or tradition. Performance like singing and dancing will be held. The Ionic Opera House will be lit with the colour red and Chinese themes etc.

 

Thanks to for participating in this interview with me!

Edited January 22, 2017 by NanoMox7

[stanzhang 3,291]

Thanks for @Viking4s and for working with me on this article!

[gabriele02 3,813]

I wanna try rice balls :3

Edited January 27, 2017 by gabriele02

[MSI 1,926]

Really interesting, like!!

[Zenyth 6,494]

'those are made as long as possible in terms of length to symbolize a long living life'

 

Wow, never knew this! 

A huge fan of dumplings and spring rolls, this made my mouth water.. :P

[gabriele02 3,813]

Happy new chinese year!

[KILL_BILL_CHAUHAN 2,505]

wow momos

[stanzhang 3,291]

'those are made as long as possible in terms of length to symbolize a long living life'

 

Wow, never knew this! 

A huge fan of dumplings and spring rolls, this made my mouth water.. :P

They have a really good taste, it exists a big variety of them. With meat, vegetables, meat+vegetables, seafood... :D

[Guest Maserati]

One of the best pieces of this issue :)

[Guanlong999 22]

I'm reading this at a friend's house, right before we eat dinner to celebrate the New Year :D

[Heles 9,220]

thnx for the interview :D

Nice article with all the themes of CNY 

 

Happy Chinese Year!!

Edited January 29, 2017 by Heles

[Thefire33 4]

Stan le bg ;)

[falcosenna1 8,320]

Wow, the Chinese culture and traditions are extremely interesting!! :o

[RIDDLER_8 5,553]

Yes. We should have a Chinese New Year celebration in Tanki Online on the Assault Mode map.

 

What do you think?

[stanzhang 3,291]

Yes. We should have a Chinese New Year celebration in Tanki Online on the Assault Mode map.

 

What do you think?

Yeah! Unfortunately it is too late this year :/

[Benefactor 6,888]

I would LOVE to have that Chinese New Year paint!

[joelpro12 735]

thats great

[RIDDLER_8 5,553]

Yeah! Unfortunately it is too late this year :/

I know.

 

OK.

 

Lets have a Chinese Happy New Year Celebration in Tanki Online on the Assault Mode next year.

[l.Unstoppable 41]

I know.

[Redstone135 0]

and a 新年快乐 to you too :D

Edited February 2, 2017 by Redstone135

[cube3e 1,973]

It got featured on the news after the Chinese New Year even took place, how are we supposed to prepare when it's over? ._.

[stanzhang 3,291]

and a 新年快乐 to you too :D

Thanks!

 

thats great

Thank you :)

 

 

I just wanted to add that there was a New Year TV show that lasted around 6 hours. If anyone wants to watch it it is on YouTube here is the link!

[hishamyas 364]

*eating his cereal* yeah yah, good article :P

[JLT123 10]

Why only 2011? ;(

Edited February 3, 2017 by stanzhang
I don't know. Tanki's choice :)