Chinese New Year is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays

  Chinese New Year is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. In China, it is also known as the ‘Spring Festival’, the literal translation of the modern Chinese name. Chinese New Year celebrations traditionally ran from Chinese New Year’s Day itself, the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar, to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month. The evening preceding Chinese New Year’s Day is an occasion for Chinese families to gather for the annual reunion dinner. Because the Chinese calendar is lunisolar, the Chinese New Year is often referred to as the “Lunar New Year”. This year it falls on the 10th of February 2013 and is the year of the snake.

  There are many legends about the festival in Chinese culture. In folk culture, the Spring Festival is There are many legends about the festival in Chinese culture. In folk culture, the Spring Festival is also called “guonian” (meaning “passing a year”). It is said that the “nian” (year) was a strong monster which was fierce and cruel and ate one kind of animal including human being a day. Human beings were scared about it and had to hide on the evening when the “nian” came out. Later, people found that “nian” was very scared about the red color and fireworks. So after that, people use red color and fireworks or firecrackers to drive away “nian” every year. As a result, the custom of using red color and setting off fireworks remains. More information about Chinese New Year in China tour chinatourguide.com.

  Waking up on New Year, everybody dresses up. First they extend greetings to their parents. Then each child will get money as a New Year gift, wrapped up in red paper. People in northern China will eat jiaozi, or dumplings, for breakfast, as they think “jiaozi” in sound means “bidding farewell to the old and ushering in the new”. Also, the shape of the dumpling is like gold ingot from ancient China. So people eat them and wish for money and treasure.
  Southern Chinese eat niangao (New Year cake made of glutinous rice flour) on this occasion, because as a homophone, niangao means “higher and higher, one year after another.” The first five days after the Spring Festival are a good time for relatives, friends, and classmates as well as colleagues to exchange greetings, gifts and chat leisurely.

Chongqing City islocated on the upper reaches of Yangtze River intersected by the Jialing River

  Chongqing City is located on the upper reaches of Yangtze River intersected by the Jialing River. Modernization brought highways, colourful boulevards, railways, and other modern innovations to transportation in the city. It is also the biggest inland river port in western China. Public transportation that is often used by local residents include monorails, inter-city railways, and buses. For travelers and tourists, the city can be easily reached through, air, train, water (through the Yangtze River), and long bus trips.

  Chongqing City is around 82, 042 square meters. It shares the boarders of many other provinces including Hubei, Hunan, Guizhou, Sichuan, and Shaanxi.

  Photographers and documentary filmmakers traveling with the group of scholars recorded the scene, as the scholars, clutching notepads, scampered up a hill in search of caves.

  The scholars, from mainland China and Taiwan, were taking part in an extraordinary two-week research project, retracing the routes taken by the imperial treasures in the 1930s and 1940s, when they were being safeguarded from the ravages of civil war and Japanese aggression, not to mention floods, bandits and warlords.

  The project is extraordinary because it was organized by rival museums, the Palace Museum of Beijing and the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, each of which claims to be the rightful home of the artifacts.

  The original Palace Museum in Beijing was split in two — its staff as well as its collection — in 1949, when the Nationalist government fell to the Communists and retreated to the island of Taiwan with thousands of supporters and a huge cargo of museum pieces.

  For decades there has been debate about ownership of the divided treasures. But in recent years the two museums have begun to collaborate on exhibitions in a stunning show of cross-Strait cooperation. On the scholars’ journey this summer, the talk was not of unification but of shared history and of a common desire to understand the remarkable events that both preserved the treasures and eventually led to their division.