On January 21st, UCI’s 2025 Lunar New Year celebration brought together ten schools and departments across campus. Stay tuned on social media channels to see highlights!
According to Chinese tradition, Lunar New Year marks the transition between old and new years, a time when families gather to honor ancestors, cleanse their homes of the previous year's misfortune and welcome good fortune for the coming year. 2025 marks the Year of the Snake, which is associated with transformation, renewal and spiritual growth. The yearly celebration, with over three millennia of documented history, carries profound cultural significance that extends far beyond China's borders to countries including Korea, Vietnam and diaspora communities worldwide.
Below, Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies Xiao Rao reflects on the holiday’s medieval roots. New to UCI, Rao brings unique expertise in premodern Chinese literature and religion, examining the intersection of laughter, humor and literary trauma in medieval Chinese culture. His current book project explores Buddhism and entertainment in Song China, while his broader research investigates how horror and humor shaped cultural life in premodern East Asia.
Although often referred to as the Lunar New Year, the Chinese New Year (along with New Year celebrations in many East Asian cultures) is actually based on a lunisolar calendar that combines lunar and solar elements. The tradition of celebrating the New Year likely dates back to the dawn of Chinese civilization, when people marked the beginning of a new agricultural cycle and sought blessings from ancestral spirits.
During the early Chinese empires, the Qin (221–206 BCE) and Han (202 BCE–220 CE), the consolidation of calendars and customs unified disparate local celebrations of seasonal agricultural activities into a nationwide system of annual festivals. Among these, the New Year celebration emerged as the most important festival, a distinction it continues to hold today.
Then and now
“Painting of New Year” 歲朝圖 from Palace Museum in Taipei 台北故宮博物院
Medieval Chinese New Year celebrations bore remarkable similarities to how the festival is observed today. Traditions such as offering sacrifices to ancestors and spirits, hosting reunion banquets, visiting friends and relatives, playing fireworks and decorating entrances with images of "gate gods" or "spring couplets" are well documented in medieval Chinese sources. The underlying beliefs driving these practices – warding off evil influences and seeking blessings for the coming year – also remain largely the same among Chinese communities worldwide.
An interesting aspect of these beliefs and practices is the use of puns in the symbolic foods or items prepared for the festival. For instance, the modern custom of including fish (yu, 魚) in the New Year feast stems from the pun between “Every year brings fish” (nian nian you yu, 年年有魚) and “Every year brings surplus” (nian nian you yu, 年年有餘).
Similarly, during the Song dynasty, people include a branch of cypress (bai, 柏), a persimmon (shi, 柿) and a citrus fruit (ju, 橘) in their New Year dishes. Together, these items – bai shi ju 柏柿橘 – formed a pun for bai shi ji 百事吉, meaning “Myriad things will be auspicious.” Such wordplay adds festive meaning to the holiday gatherings.
Although medieval Chinese New Year celebrations closely resemble their modern counterparts, like most folk traditions, their exact forms have continually evolved, adapting to the communities that celebrate them. As Chinese New Year becomes increasingly global, we can expect to see even more creative and diverse ways of celebrating the festival.
A special thanks to all our sponsors, and especially Hyundai Motors America, for making our annual Lunar New Year celebration possible!
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