The Chinese New Year festival, known as Yuan Tan, is probably the most important event on the Chinese calendar. Some 370 million people in China travel home to celebrate the three-day public holiday with their relatives, and every four years are given twenty days official leave to visit their home towns or villages. The coming of the New Year also signifies the end of winter, so the festival is also known as the Spring Festival.

The worldwide event has a predominantly red theme because red is the colour the Chinese associate with happiness and good luck. The season seems to breed red greeting cards, candles and tablecloths, while red flowers are commonly used as decorations. Even walls of houses are whitewashed and doors and gates painted red.

Flowers like the white narcissus, pink peach or plum blossoms — which signify long life — are also prominent throughout the holiday season along with peonies which are flowers of wealth and honour. If the blossoms open on New Year’s Day it is believed to be a sign that the New Year will be both happy and prosperous.

No Yuan Tan celebration would be complete without firecrackers and dragon dances which are performed to frighten away evil spirits and also the legendary monster Nien. Nien is said to have raided villages for food during winter until the fearful people discovered that Nien was scared of firecrackers, the sight of fire and the colour red. The Yuan Tan festival has kept Nien at bay for many, many years.