Chinese Spring Festival
New Folk Customs
Celebrating Chinese Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, has evolved over the past years with the rapid development of technology as well as Chinese people's constantly changing understanding of traditional culture and entertainment.
Grab digital red envelopes
Grabbing and sending red envelopes on WeChat is a fun and rewarding experience during the festival, as it is a good way to experience Chinese culture and maintain relationships with Chinese young people.
Collect five ‘Fu’ cards
If you see someone stop in front of a Chinese character 福 (Fu) and raise his phone, don't be surprised – he is collecting five virtual “Fu” cards in Alipay. Each ‘Fu’ card represents a different blessing. Once you successfully collect all the five different types of Fu, you can split a 200 million yuan prize with the other participants. The five cards can be accessed by using your phone to scan “Fu”, which means ‘good luck’, and a range of other methods such as playing the “Ant Forest Game”.
Watch the Spring Festival Gala online
The Spring Festival Gala hosted by China Central Television each year has become an important part of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration since 1983. As an important part of traditional Chinese culture, the celebration of Spring Festival is spreading around the world. A galaxy of big-time stars will take to the stage, but it will also be full of moments that netizens are guaranteed to make fun of. As a result, it's becoming a new tradition to browse social media platforms like Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, to see how people mock the gala.
