Visitors of all ages can enjoy hands-on activities like face painting, calligraphy and arts and crafts presented by local Chinese language schools. Next, enjoy live music, martial arts, Chinese folk dances, dragon and lion dances and other family-friendly cultural performances. Kick off this annual event at the Oregon Convention Center by snacking on free samples from local Chinese restaurants. Presented by the Portland Chinese Times, the Chinese New Year Cultural Fair draws thousands of attendees. Other traditions include lucky papers with good wishes, money-stuffed red envelopes and firecrackers to frighten off the mythical Nian. Festive menus feature foods like dumplings, cakes and long noodles for long life. Chinese New YearĬhinese New Year is traditionally a 15-day celebration that includes wearing the lucky color red, paying respects to ancestors and cleaning the house to drive away bad luck. Read on to learn more about the annual Lunar New Year celebrations in Portland, all of which are open to the public. Several East and Southeast Asian countries mark Lunar New Year with various cultural events and activities, but you don’t need to fly halfway around the world to join the celebration. These idioms might be a saying we want to live by for the year or something we want to come true.The Lunar New Year marks the first day of the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar, which typically falls in late January or early February. The most obvious is the red decorations - we would hang red lanterns outside our house to drive out bad luck, as well as hang two-part idioms on red scrolls along the wall. To ensure luck in the “new life,” there are many little traditions Asian families partake in both in preparation for and on the day of the Lunar New Year. This program is similar to watching Anderson Cooper cover the Times Square Ball Drop on New Year’s Eve.Īround my house, there are dumplings, rice cakes, my relatives, and more importantly, lots of red. Oftentimes my family and I would cook together, while China’s famous TV program CCTV’s New Year’s Gala plays in the background. Similar to the New Year in Western countries, Lunar New Year is a time for family and to celebrate your ancestors, your traditions, and everything that came before you. The Lunar New Year is considered a time to honor family and ancestors. RELATED: Which Chinese Zodiac Signs Are Lucky? For example, people in Thailand celebrate their traditional national New Year, Songkran, from April 13-15, but as of 1940, the country has considered January 1 the official New Year, while many also celebrate on the Chinese New Year. That said, the start of the Lunar New Year differs in some countries. While the legal holiday, only lasts for seven days, the traditional celebration begins on the New moon and lasts until the first night of the Full Moon, a period of approximately two weeks. The Lunar New Year lasts from New Year's Eve until the 15th of the month, or about 16 days. The Lunar New Year lasts about two weeks. In the Chinese Lunar calendar, a 13th month, or leap month, is added to the calendar every three years for the sake of syncing lunar and solar calendars, a method known as lunisolar timekeeping. By basing our months on the sun, rather than the moon’s phases, Western calendar months last 30-31 days for a total of 365 days per year, whereas as Lunar calendar months last about 29 days for a total of 354. Western countries often use the Gregorian calendar this means we base our years off of calculations based on the sun’s cycle around the Earth.
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