Is Lunar New Year Chinese New Year?

Is Lunar New Year Chinese New Year?
Shoppers look for decorations to buy as people prepare for Chinese New Year at Dihua Street in Taipei, Taiwan on Feb. 10, 2021. (An Rong Xu/Getty Images)
Hans Yeung
2/1/2023
Updated:
2/1/2023
0:00
Commentary

Many Asians celebrate Lunar New Year, but Chinese patriots seemingly do not like this name. A Chinese student at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University found this name on a display board disagreeable, crossed out “Lunar,” and wrote “Chinese” below it. The British Museum and South Korea co-hosted an event to celebrate the Korean Lunar New Year, and some “little pinks (young pro-CCP Chinese)” stormed the Museum’s Facebook page to comment, “Spring Festival (mainland Chinese’s way of saying ‘Lunar New Year’) belongs to China.” Finally, the post was deleted.

To modern Chinese revolutionaries, such excesses of the “little pinks” are like flies hovering over cultural garbage spurned by the revolutionary forefathers. They seem unaware that since the 1911 Revolution, the “Lunar New Year” has been denounced by generations of Chinese people, even up to now. After the Republic of China—Asia’s first republic—was founded, the Gregorian calendar was adopted. However, considering that the “old customs” were difficult to eradicate at once, the government renamed Lunar New Year as Spring Festival, Dragon Boat Festival as Summer Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival as Autumn Festival, and Winter Solstice as Winter Festival and had them celebrated in a less elaborate manner. In other words, Lunar New Year was already history at that time. After the success of the Northern Expedition with Chiang Kai-shek moving the capital to Nanjing, the Nationalist Government announced the abolition of the lunar calendar and all holidays previously assigned for lunar festivals. For those who insisted on the Lunar New Year, the government derived a defamatory term for it—“New Year of the Abolished Calendar”—in an attempt to minimize its celebration.

The Nationalist Government adopted a policy of cultural transference regarding the new year celebration. It stipulated that all those celebrations for the Lunar New Year, such as ancestral worship, festival gathering, spring banquet, red lantern, and new year couplets, shall be transferred to the Gregorian New Year. The Republic of China (pre-communism) was already a new China in the sense that a new tradition of new year celebrations was firmly founded.

The communist China succeeded many Republic of China’s traditions, sticking to the Gregorian calendar and celebrating its new year is one of them. Hong Kong leftist newspapers illustrate this tradition well in their manner of handling new year advertisements. Traditional Chinese-style lanterns appeared in advertisements for celebrating the Gregorian New Year, whereas those for the “Spring Festival”—a term the communists adopted from the Republic of  China—were plain and white, without any traditional symbols. The “New Year’s Day Editorial” of People’s Daily is an important propaganda tool, whereas they never have similar “Spring Festival Editorials.”

Spring Festival celebration with the highest tension took place during the Cultural Revolution, when the motto of “destroying the four olds” was chanted every day, resulting in widespread violence. The “proletarian revolutionary rebels” thus celebrated the Spring Festival by staying at the workplace, answering Mao’s call to “grasp revolution and increase production.” The Spring Festival thus became revolutionary and combatant and used as an opportunity to demonstrate one’s determination to destroy the old world.

The “little pinks” may argue: isn’t the Spring Festival the same as New Year? Not necessarily. Back in the Roman Empire, the winter solstice was celebrated as the new year. As for China, the Lunar New Year is never the only Chinese New Year to be observed in history. Traditionally, China adopted a lunisolar calendar, with 24 solar terms dividing the year into four seasons. Whereas the Zhou Dynasty (1046 BC to 256 BC) had its new year in the eleventh lunar month (December in the Gregorian calendar), the Xia Dynasty (2070 BC to 1600 BC) adopted the solar term “Beginning of Spring”—usually Feb. 4—as the New Year Day. In other words, the Spring Festival, marked by the first day of the first lunar month, is not necessarily the Chinese New Year.

It is quite clear that the Chinese people only have one lawful and politically acceptable New Year—the Gregorian New Year. Comparatively, Lunar New Year is a more precise concept than the Chinese New Year, which has quite some different definitions. Whereas the Lunar New Year has been abolished or celebrated in China in an evasive manner since 1912, it is always embraced passionately by Hongkongers, both in name and in essence, never giving it up for any reason. Therefore, it deserves to call what the “little pinks” call “Chinese New Year” as “Hong Kong New Year.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Hans Yeung is a former manager at the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority, specializing in history assessment. He is also a historian specializing in modern Hong Kong and Chinese history. He is the producer and host of programs on Hong Kong history and a columnist for independent media. He now lives in the UK with his family. Email: [email protected]
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