Beijing: With traditional fairs and hash and travel trips during the prolonged holidays this year, China is about to ring during the spring of the year of the Serpent, the first since its inclusion in the list Intangible cultural heritage of UNESCO.
For the Chinese around the world, the spring festival is a moment for family meetings, festive traditions, vacation purchases and various cultural and tourist activities. This year, he fell on January 29 with hundreds of millions of people traveling to find the families of the world’s largest human migration in the world.
The celebrations today put traditional and modern elements, temple fairs, lantern exhibitions, lion dances and bazaars of cultural heritage intangible to village galas, light shows and drones, exhibitions museums and travel at home and abroad.
This year, festive joy and activities are still stimulated by the recognition of UNESCO, pro-consumption policies and the extension of traditional seven days by an additional day.
Family meetings and traditional festivities
For migrant workers like Zhang Changfu, from Fucking in Guangxi Zhuang, the autonomous region of southern China, the spring festival offers a rare opportunity for a family meeting.
“I have been working far from my home for 20 years, but I go home every spring festival,” said Zhang, 41 the local temple fair.
The temple fair, a range of folk performance, local specialties and traditional crafts, is a show familiar at that time of the year. Although such activities contain more traditional elements in the countryside, big cities like Beijing and Shanghai have a tradition of holding large -scale fairs.
For others, like Lin Jia who works in Nanjing, capital of the Jiangsu province of East China, the Spring Festival is the ideal moment for a visit to the family. The parents and grandmother of flax have traveled from the Hunan province to join her for the holidays.
Lin plans to show them around the city after a New Year’s dinner in a Hotpot restaurant. “It’s both a meeting and mini-vacancies,” she said.
This year, many cities organize more traditional festive activities, motivated by the inscription of the Spring Festival on the UNESCO List of UNESCO of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity in December. The southwest megapular of Chongqing has planned more than 100 exhibitions, bazaars and performance of the intangible cultural heritage during the holidays.
“We hope that visitors will be able to feel the strong festive atmosphere and the special charm of our cultural heritage,” said Tang Mao, the organizer of a cultural heritage bazaar in the Chongqing Jiefangbei commercial area, where more than 40 Artisans display traditional professions such as paper cutting, New Year’s image drawing and manufacturing of sugar figures.
Holiday shopping
For centuries, shopping was a crucial part of the preparations for the spring festival: pleasant food for new clothes and carefully chosen gifts.
Liu Fengmei, a 70 -year -old woman in Shanghai, traveled more than an hour by metro for First Foodhall, a secular food store on the emblematic Nanjing Road, to stock up on traditional vacation snacks.
A long queue is seen outside the store, which, like many across the country at this time of the year, is filled with festive decorations and a dazzling range of traditional foods.
After the recognition of UNESCO, Chinese consumers also seem to be particularly interested in goods with a cultural festival flair.
Li gang with the Ministry of Commerce said that sales of New Chinese jewelry and goods featuring intangible cultural inheritances increased by 52.6% and 26.6% during the purchase event in One month line for the festival initiated by the ministry.
In recent years, the Spring Festival shopping lists have included more imported products, reflecting the growing purchasing power of the Chinese and the growing appetite for imported quality goods.
Earlier this month, a cargo cargo cargo of Chilean cherries arrived at the port of Nansha in southern Guangzhou in southern China, perfectly timed to offer a festive treat for millions ahead of the festival of spring.
“Chilean cherries, Australian lobsters and Russian snow crabs … The prices of imported products are quite attractive, so I plan to prepare a New Year’s Eve dinner that mixes Chinese and foreign flavors,” said a Customer nicknamed Guo in a fresh store. Freshippo food chain in Beijing.
According to the ministry, the government subsidized by the government, mobile phones, mobile devices and green and intelligent devices are also highly sought after the festival, according to the ministry.
“Expenses on New Year’s goods can offer an overview of resilience and vitality of consumption throughout the year,” said Hong Tao, director of the Institute of Business Economics at Beijing Technology and Business University, which expects a new wave of growth in vacation consumption.
