Xu Xunlei.
There are four hours in adays, spring, autumn, winter, and summer;At the beginning of the year, the auspicious day is good.
On 22 December 2023, the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution by consensus to designate the Chinese New Year (Chinese New Year) as a United Nations holiday. (China News Service, December 23**).
The Chinese New Year in Greater China, the new holiday of the United Nations - the world has more warmth and beauty because of the Chinese New Year!
Note that the name in parentheses after "Spring Festival" in the report is "lunar new year" instead of "Chinese new year", which is accurate because Spring Festival is the Chinese lunar year.
Following the adoption of the General Assembly resolution, Ambassador Dai Bing, Chargé d'affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of China to the United Nations, said, "As a traditional Chinese folk festival, the Spring Festival is not only a day for family reunion, farewell to the old and welcome the new, but also carries the common values of all mankind, such as peace, harmony and harmony, and also carries the common values of all mankind, such as family harmony, social tolerance, and harmonious coexistence between man and nature. ”
In addition to important official holidays in the United Nations, the host country, the United States, the General Assembly may adopt a resolution designating the holidays widely celebrated around the world as United Nations holidays, and try to avoid arranging meetings and activities on those days.
Among the most familiar are the Gregorian New Year (January 1st) and Christmas Day (December 25th).It also includes Good Friday, Eid al-Fitr, Memorial Day, Eid al-Adha, Independence Day, Labor Day and Thanksgiving. The most numerous of these are religious holidays, which involve a wide range of people and have a great impact, and should indeed become United Nations holidays.
Previously, since January 25, 2021, Chinese has officially become the official language of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). It is the world's most influential international tourism organization, with 159 member countries, headquartered in Madrid, Spain, and joined by China in 1983. Becoming its official language is not easy and requires ratification by more than two-thirds of the Member States. Today, there are six official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
These are all signs of China's openness and integration into the world.
bLunar New Year, the Spring Festival, is a holiday arranged by our ancestors in China three or four thousand years ago.
Other names for the Spring Festival include New Year, New Year, New Year's Festival, Tianla, New Year's Head, etc. One year of reincarnation, four auspicious times. When it comes to the Spring Festival, Chinese naturally no longer use the Gregorian calendar, but switch to the lunar calendar to re-time: Chinese New Year's Eve and the beginning of the first lunar month.
First, the beginning of the first month.
2. The third day of the first month ......This is the power of tradition.
The so-called "year-end and new year", for Chinese, the real "year-end" is not the "year-end" of the Gregorian calendar, but the "year-end" Chinese New Year's Eve of the lunar calendar. This is the ultimate ritual of time.
From the eighth day of the lunar month to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, so many traditional customs are happy to come: drinking Laba porridge, sacrificial stoves, sweeping dust, North Xiao Nian, South Xiao Nian, beating rice cakes, making bacon, filling sausages, doing New Year's goods, sticking New Year's red (pasting Spring Festival couplets, blessing characters, door gods, New Year's paintings, window flowers, etc.), making dumplings, eating Chinese New Year's Eve meals, keeping the New Year, greeting the New Year, catching the temple fair, watching the fire, dragon and lion dances, eating glutinous rice balls, making Lantern Festival ......Even "catching up with the Spring Festival" and "watching the Spring Festival Gala" have become new customs, although the Spring Festival is very hard, and the party is getting more and more ugly.
Writer Zhou Zuoren said: "The reason why we are very interested in the local customs of the year is very simple, it is for the small changes in our ordinary life. In fact, each "small change" is aggregated into a "big difference" of the Spring Festival.
Of all China's intangible cultural heritage, the most important "intangible cultural heritage" is, of course, the Spring Festival. The world's largest tangible cultural heritage is the Great Wall of China and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand CanalThe world's largest intangible cultural heritage is the Chinese New Year Festival. Spring Festival is a national festival for all Chinese (including Chinese all over the world), and now 56 ethnic groups celebrate this most solemn festival.
Behind the Spring Festival culture, there are emotions, wishes, ethics, beliefs, and the unique life aesthetics of the Chinese. Zhang Shu, a Qing Dynasty philologist, said in "The Source of Surnames": "The towering tree must have its roots;The water of the mountains must have its source. "Family is the most powerful emotional bond, and the most important thing for the Spring Festival is, of course, a family reunion.
The Spring Festival is first family, and then social. The Japanese thinker Daisaku Ikeda once said, "The family is the only oasis and resting place of the soul." The Chinese writer Liang Shiqiu said, "There is no place in the world that is more comfortable than your own home, no matter how simple and cold that home is." The phrase "go home for the New Year" condenses the Chinese's sense of kinship and ethics, and strengthens the Chinese's sense of tradition and history.
The Spring Festival is the identity of the Chinese and the identity of Chinese culture.
c The four seas celebrate the New Year together, and the five continents share the flavor of the New Year.
A good festival should be shared with the world. The Spring Festival is not only a cultural brand in China, but also a brand culture in the world.
Chinese New Year, carnival with the world.
Since 2019, the "Tokyo Tower Lights Up China Red" event has been held every Chinese New Year's Eve on the eve of the Chinese New Year.
Tokyo is the largest gathering place for overseas Chinese in Japan. "Tokyo Tower" is lit up with "Chinese red", which has become a very representative and influential New Year's cultural symbol in the hearts of overseas Chinese in Japan. At the scene in 2019, many overseas Chinese in Japan gathered at Tokyo Tower to celebrate the arrival of the Spring Festival. The then Japanese Prime Minister ** Shinzo also offered New Year wishes to the Chinese people through **.
On January 20, 2023, the "Panda Spring Festival Festival" was held in Ueno Park, Tokyo, which became the first temple fair in the Tokyo area with a strong Chinese New Year flavor. To experience the Chinese New Year in Tokyo, you can't do without cute pandas and delicious Chinese food.
In the United States, across the Pacific Ocean, there are also many places that have determined the Spring Festival as a legal holiday.
In August 2018, the California Legislature passed a bill to officially list the Spring Festival as a legal holiday in California to encourage the active promotion of Chinese New Year culture. San Francisco's Chinatown hosts a variety of celebrations every Spring Festival, including a parade of floats and a Miss Chinatown pageant, presenting a "New Year feast".
On the evening of February 17, 2015, on the banks of the Hudson River in New York, tens of thousands of fireworks soared into the sky to the cheerful melody of Chinese folk music. This is the first time in the United States that fireworks have been set off on a large scale to celebrate the Chinese New Year. On February 2, 2023, the General Assembly of the New York City Council passed the "Lunar New Year Resolution", officially making the Lunar New Year a statutory holiday in New York City.
In Europe, due to the large number of overseas Chinese living here, the atmosphere of the Spring Festival is relatively strong. My hometown, Zhejiang **Tian County, is a famous hometown of overseas Chinese, with a population of less than 600,000, but 3810,000 overseas Chinese live in 146 countries and regions. I have five siblings, I am the eldest who has been in China, and my two younger brothers and two younger sisters are living in Europe, and they have a good Christmas and Chinese New Year.
What is particularly interesting is that in Bavaria, Germany, there is a small town called Dieterford, which has been built into a "Chinese town" by the Germans themselves for more than 100 years, and the Spring Festival is more "hi" than China.
In this "China Town", there are Chinese elements everywhere, there are Chinese fountains, Chinese museums, etc. The "Chinese Carnival" is held here every February, and people parade in Chinese costumes to form a Chinese-style carnival. They held the "Chinese Carnival" for the first time, dating back to 1928.
At the "Chinese Festival", there are countless Chinese elements: Hanfu show (mainly Qing Dynasty-style Chinese costumes), Yangge twisting, dragon boat rowing, swinging ring, tai chi, fan dance, dragon dance, acrobatics, calligraphy, tea art, Chinese kung fu, Chinese folk music, Chinese food ......Various performances are splendid. At the carnival, even the "Chinese Emperor" will be elected, and foreigners are really "city play".
According to incomplete statistics, so far, more than 20 countries around the world have established the Spring Festival as a legal holiday at their local level, with the recognition and blessing of "official identity".
dThe Spring Festival is both Chinese and global. The Spring Festival of the Chinese, a festival all over the world.
Today, about one-fifth of the world's population celebrates Chinese New Year in different ways.
Every year, the Secretary-General of the United Nations delivers a congratulatory message during the Chinese New Year, extending holiday greetings and blessings to Chinese people around the world. The United Nations advocates the cultural values of diversity and inclusiveness, and the "celebration of the Spring Festival" is undoubtedly a concrete embodiment.
Since the Spring Festival in 2010, China's multi-departmental joint launch of the "Happy New Year" large-scale cultural exchange activities overseas. Now, the Spring Festival has finally been designated as a United Nations holiday, which is a good thing for cultural exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations. This is not what some netizens said, "It's not enough for you to be a foreign festival, but also to force foreigners to celebrate a 'foreign festival'".
By spending the Spring Festival together, the human world can better understand Chinese symbols, perceive Chinese culture, and experience Chinese civilization, so as to create a better future together.
Exchanges and mutual learning among different civilizations in the world have never been one-way. Foreigners can celebrate the Chinese Spring Festival, and Chinese can also celebrate foreign "foreign festivals", so as to truly reflect "long live the great unity of the people of the world".
However, what is more strange is that if you want to celebrate Christmas in China, it is often rebuked on the Chinese Simplified Chinese Internet, and "Christmas" seems to have become a "political taboo", and "anti-foreign festival" has become a kind of "political correctness". When I write this article, it happens to be Christmas again, and I look at all kinds of voices on the Internet that denounce it as "foreign slaves' festivals". Just ask, what kind of cultural self-confidence is this?
Let global civilizations truly learn from each other and make progress, and let the human world always be full of warm love!
Merry Christmas!Happy Chinese New Year!(The author is a special commentator of the Japan branch of the Hong Kong News Service).