Blog on Shanghai and China

Whether in the motherland or around the world (i.e. Boston), the 1.3 billion Chinese people around the world all celebrate Chinese New Year (aka Spring Festival, Lunar New Year) in a remarkably similar way:

1. Collect family and friends

2. Make dumplings together (see dumpling making instructional video made by one of my colleagues)

3. Gorge on dumplings and watch CCTV's New Year's Gala 中国中央电视台春节联欢晚会, the premier Chinese media event of the year.  See Wikipedia's description of CCTV's New Year's Gala.

Warning: the show is VERY culturally Chinese... it's gotten a little more mainstream, Western, international in recent years but the Chinese still love their patriotic revolution songs, sweet children's voices, and cuddly animal dances.  Fast forward to 6 min 30 sec to my favorite-- the acrobatic, bouncing pandas.

Taiwanese pop singer/composer/phenom Jay Chou also performed his hit song Ben Cao Gang Mu 本草纲目 or "An Herbalist's Manual" (Chinese and English lyrics to Ben Cao Gan Mu) with guest performers.  I'm a HUGE Jay Chou fan and can't wait for him to collaborate with Western artists and get international attention... because we all know, once you go yellow, there's no other fellow!

In short, Chinese New Year really resembles more Thanksgiving than Western New Year.  Rather than going out and partying, it's all about feasting and lounging around.  Just replace "football" with "CCTV New Year's Gala" and "turkey" with "dumplings".