Chinese New Year - Eplanation

This week Mrs Anderson & Mrs Kirk patricks writing groups pared up to create a explanation about Chinese New Year. For Writing Nikaelah and I pared up. We found a video about Chinese New Year. You can find this video on our class site. We learnt that there is a legend to why Chinese New Year was celebrated. In our explanation you can find the main reasons to why Chinese New Year is celebrated & How it is celebrated. Thank you for reading my Explanation. Please be sure to give me some feed back in the comments below.

How did Chinese New Year begin?

Chinese New Year is a celebration that started a long time ago in China. For each Chinese New Year there’s a zodiac animal, if you’re born in the year of that animal you’re said to most likely have the same traits as it. One example  would be loyal if you were born in the year of the dog.

In ancient China it is said that there was a Monster who would visit the ancient Chinese every first moon of the year, when he came he would terrorise the people. The Monster’s name was Nian. One day a wise old man told the people about Nian’s weaknesses. They were the color red, loud noises and fire. The next time that Nian came the people were ready, dressed in red with flaming torches in their hands and loud beats exploding from their drums they scared Nian away.  Ever since then Chinese (and many other people today) celebrate the monster’s disappearance.

For Chinese New Year they would introduce traditional foods to celebrate with. Shrimp, noodles and egg rolls. There are more traditional foods and decorations too. For decorations people mainly use red items (sometimes gold colour too). People also hand out envelopes with money in them to children and unmarried adults, these envelopes are called Hong Bao. They’re given for good luck and prosperity. Chinese New Year is celebrated for 15 days and on the last few, people release paper lanterns. Kung Hei Fat Choi is a way of saying ‘happy new year’ in Chinese.

One day the Jade Emperor called for a race of animals to decide which twelve would be in the Chinese zodiac, which meant that if they accomplished getting into the top twelve there would be a “year” of their animal. The Rat came first and was quickly followed by an Ox , a Tiger , a Rabbit , a Dragon , a Snake , a Horse , a Goat , a Monkey , a Rooster, a Dog and a Pig.

Each Chinese New Year is a celebration of an animal that competed in the zodiac race and came within the top twelve. For 2018 the zodiac animal is the Dog. Each person to be born on the year of the dog is supposed to be loyal and responsible. Kung Hei Fat Choi