In 1912, the traditional calendar for nearly 4,000 years was officially abandoned when the Revolution of 1911, led by Dr Sun Yat-sen, overthrew the imperial Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and established the Republic of China.
    Since then, the country has used the Gregorian calendar, a system now in general use, to arrange the months in the year and days in the month and introduced by Pope Gregory XIII. It is commonly known as the “solar calendric system” or “Western calendric system.”
    But old traditions die hard.  And despite what the official calendar may say, the Chinese have never surrendered their habit of checking the small Chinese characters below the Roman numerals. In the hearts of Chinese people, the New Year actually coincides with the Spring Festival, a very special day for them, and not January 1.
    At present, two kinds of marks for each day can be found on the most commonly available Chinese calendars. The Roman numerals are above the line, marking the Christian era, while several Chinese characters are printed below. The Chinese traditional calendar shows the twenty-four seasonal division points by which the solar year is divided (under the traditional calendar) according to the sun’s apparent movement along the ecliptic.
    Just as Christmas Day and, to a lesser extent New Year’s Day, are important dates in Western culture, the Chinese lunar New Year Day and Spring Festival are of immense importance.
    Lunar calendar and solar calendar
    The cultural meaning of the Chinese lunar calendar is very different from that of the solar one in western countries. Year, month, week and day are simply marked by numerals in today’s solar (Gregorian) calendar in China. In the West, the new year comes a week after Christmas. January, gets its name from Janus, the Roman god of gates and doors (ianua), beginnings and endings, and is represented with a double-faced head, each looking in opposite directions. He was worshipped at the beginning of  harvest time, planting, marriage, birth, and other types of beginnings, especially the beginnings of important events in a person’s life.  But none of these allusions has anything to do with the culture and life of the Chinese people, and for many, the solar calendar is simply a collection of figures devoid of cultural connotation.
    As far as the calculation of dates is concerned, the Gregorian calendar is fixed by the revolution of the Earth around the sun, which takes 365.24219 days a year. Although the traditional Chinese calendar is called a a lunar calendar, it is actually a kind of luni-solar calendar, which takes account of the movements of the sun, the moon and other astronomical phenomena.
    In ancient times, Chinese people observed and surveyed the sun by setting up a pole to measure the length of the shadow it cast. On the day of winter solstice, the 22nd seasonal division point which marks the sun’s position at 270 degrees on the ecliptic, the length of the shadow cast is the longest, as the sun reaches its  closest position to the earth. As the days pass, the shadow becomes shorter and shorter until the summer solstice, the 10th seasonal division point, which marks the sun’s position at 90 degrees on the ecliptic, when the shortest shadow falls. The period between the longest and shortest shadow is one year. As for following the moon, the most common way used by the Chinese is to regard the period of time from one full moon to the next as one month. The first day of the lunar month is a day with no visible moon, called “shuo” ,while the fifteenth day of the lunar month falls on the day the moon is full, named “wang” .There are 12 lunar months in a year, the big lunar month has 30 days and small lunar month has 29 days. The non-leap year usually has 12 such lunar months with a total of 354 or 355 days.
    In order to keep up with the solar year (there are 365 days in the solar year and 366 in a leap year), the traditional Chinese calendar adjusted the time by setting a lunar leap month. There are seven such months in every 11 lunar years, with 13 lunar months in the year with a lunar leap month, the total days of the lunar leap years reaching 383 or 384. With a proportion of non-leap year and lap year, the lunar year is always in unison with the solar year.
    Why does the Chinese calendar take the movement laws of both sun and moon into consideration? This probably has something to do with the fact that the Chinese pay more attention to the concept of balance between Yin and Yang. In Chinese’s minds, the sun represents Yang, while the moon stands for Yin. They believe Yin and Yang are the two opposite essential principles or forces existing in nature and human affairs. The growth and decline of Yin and Ynag is regarded as the root cause of every change and development. Yi Jing (The Book of Changes) was the ancient and most revered of Chinese classics. In Chinese characters, YiÕs structure is the sun (ri) on the top and the moon (yue) at the bottom. What Yi Jing studies is the law relating to the change of Yin and Yang, the two opposite principles in time and space. The concept of Yin and Yang courses the veins of the Chinese people. Therefore, it is not surprising they created a calendar which merges Yin and Yang into a single whole. 
    As for the calendar itself, the beginning of a year may start from any month, and still not effect the preciseness of the calendar. The lunar calendar is also named Xia Li (Xia means Xia Dynasty and Li means calendar in Chinese language) as the current calendar used by the Chinese was established during the Xia Dynasty (2100BC-1600BC).
    Chinese rulers in ancient times  held different opinions about the five elements Ñmetal, wood, water, fire and earthÑ a theory used by the philosophers  to explain the origin of the world. Each set the beginning of a year in a different way. In the latter part of the Yin Dynasty, also known as the Shang Dynasty (1600BC-1100BC), the sovereign set the 12th month of the lunar year as the beginning of the year. In the Zhou Dynasty (1100BC-221BC), the emperor fixed the lunar month with the winter solstice, usually in the 11th month of the lunar year, as the beginning. Yin Zheng (259BC-210BC), the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty (221BC-206BC), changed the beginning of the lunar year to the 10th lunar month. Finally, during the period of Emperor Wu Di  in the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD) Ñ specifically in 104BC Ñ the tradition of setting the first lunar month as the start of the lunar year began, a practice which continues to this day.
    It is significant the first lunar month is set at the beginning of the year, because the calendar complies with the general process of agricultural production, of germination in spring, growth in summer, harvest in autumn and storage, or preserving in winter. Thus, the lunar calendar is also named the farmer’s almanac. The aforementioned is the basic reason why the lunar calendar has endured so long in China, a nation for whom agriculture has long been fundamental to the lives of its people.
    Astronomy and people
    Why do we need to trace the origin of the Chinese calendar when looking at the Chinese lunar New Year?  One important reason is Chinese festivals and holidays invariably originate with the calendar.
    In Chinese culture, “jing tian fa zu” (showing the respect for heaven and ancestors) is an important concept. “Jing tian” means to show respect for heaven or the laws of nature in the universe and “fa zu” means to cherish the cultural relics left by the ancestors. Chinese culture, regardless of Confucianism and Taoism, is steeped in the basic laws and concepts which originate in astronomy. There is an old Chinese saying: “Even sages should do something in accordance with the celestial phenomena.” This tells us of the need for mankind to respect and be guided by phenomena and the laws of nature, upon which a civilization can develop.
    The Chinese festival culture stems from the eight red-letter days in its calendar, including the  sacrificial rites of the  vernal equinox, autumn equinox, winter solstice, summer solstice, beginning of spring, beginning of summer, beginning of autumn and beginning of winter, eight of the twenty-four seasonal division points under the traditional Chinese calendar. Before the Han Dynasty, these eight days were very important times for the offering of sacrifices. At that time, what the people, including emperors, dukes, princes and civilians, longed for was favourable weather, which meant bumper harvests and prosperity. The worship of different idols characterized each of the eight days. Winter solstices were a time for making sacrifices to heaven, the summer solstice to the Earth, the vernal equinox to the sun, the autumn equinox the moon The advent of each of the four seasons were also marked in their own specific way.
    All these activities of worship were the earliest embryonic forms of the country’s festivals.
    Since Emperor Wu Di decided to adopt the Xia Li (lunar calendar), the Chinese people followed suit.
    The adoption in 1912 of the Gregorian calendar and the fixing of New YearÕs Day on the first day of the solar calendar changed the official status quo, but not the mindset of the people. In 1930, the first day of the first lunar month was fixed as the Spring Festival. That is the evolution of the Chinese people’s lunar New Year from the inception.
    How Spring Festival is celebrated
    Although the date of the Spring Festival was switched from the beginning of spring to the first day of the first lunar month, the main ways of celebrating it, from bygone days, remain popular.
    From place to place, ethnic group to ethnic group, a rich variety of customs and practices have evolved.
    But two threads runs through them all: one is the ringing out of the old year and welcome in the new, the other is to encourage good omens and ward off evil. Community and family-specific customs also mark the celebrations.These include setting off firecrackers, rounds of  visiting  to extend New Year good wishes, eating jiaozi (savoury dumplings stuffed with meat and vegetable) and hanging calligraphy scrolls (couplets written on red paper) on doors. The community celebrations feature various song, dance and theatrical performances, such as the beating of drums and gongs, the lion dance and the dragon lantern dance. Nowadays, Spring Festival runs from the first to thefifth day of the lunar month, but in some places tradition still persists and it continues to the fifteenth.
    It is said lighting firecrackers can drive away the so-called shan sao, a strange ghost who is unafraid of human beings. There are many legends and stories about the popular practice. The most well-known version concerns a monster called “nian”  which preyed on human beingson the eve of the Lunar New Year. To scare it off, people used to burn bamboo, which gives off a popping sound, a practice thought to have originated from the lighting of torches in royal palaces. Down the generations the custom evolved to the letting off of firecrackers todrive away the legendary nian. In the past ten years, many large cities in China  banned firecrackers citing safety concerns. But age-old traditions are hard to break and  an eruption of firecrackers fills the night air of every inhabited part of the country on New Year’s Eve.
    During the days of the lunar New Year holiday, it is a popular practice among family and friends, colleagues or acquaintances to pay New Year’s visits. The custom may originate from the ceremony to offer sacrifices.  As people of old came together to offer a sacrifice to heaven, it forged a bond between them. As times have changed, the sacrificial rite vanished among ordinary families in China. And only the practice of “paying a new Year’s visit” lives on among relatives, friends and neighbours. When people meet during the festival, they exchange blessings or other good wishes for the coming year and present each other with gifts.
    Jiaozi and yuanxiao (sweet dumplings made from glutinous rice flour) are two essential kinds of food for Spring Festival. Generally, people in the north like to have jiaozi, while for those in the south it is yuanxiao. Children or other family members working in other places or living in their own home will do their utmost to have a family reunion dinner with their parents, sitting around a table together making jiaozi or having yuanxiao reminiscing or catching up on each others newse. For young and old, the importance of being together cannot be overstated, even in a China which has changed beyond all recognition in some parts in the last 20 years.
    The hanging of couplet scrolls is the evolution of an ancient custom “tao fu,” involving peach-wood plaques painted with the images of two door gods. Peach-wood reportedly has a strong, irritating smell, good for warding off evil spirits.Tao fu was gradually replaced by the red paper scrolls, bearing words and expressions of good wishes and blessings for the New Year.The scrolls usually have two vertical couplets which are hung on either side of the door with a third horizontal across the top. The Chinese character fu (good fortune) is often to be found.
    For the last two decadesthe popularity of the gala Spring Festival Party screened by China Central Television on the lunar New Year’s Eve has soared. Today millions of Chinese tune into the show.Comedy skits and cross-talk are among the most enjoyed. To meet the demands of a wide audience, the province-level or city-level television stations also organize their own Spring Festival show.
    Day time hours are filled with visits to the bustling temple fairs in  city parks or temples, such as Ditan Park (the Temple of the Earth) and Baiyunguan, (the White Cloud Taoist Temple), in Beijing. The fairs offer a myriad of folk entertainments, traditional foods, arts and crafts.