Breakaway Destination Guides (International)

New Year Festival or Spring Festival January or February The celebration actually lasts for nearly a month. During the last month of the "old" year preparations are made. The house is scrubbed and cleaned, arguments and debts are settled, and all of the food that will be eaten during the main five days of the celebration is prepared in advance. Sweets are offered to Tsao-Chun, the kitchen god, and a week before the New Year begins the picture of Tsao-Chun that has hung in the kitchen all year round is burned, sending him off to heaven to make a report on the household. On New Year's Eve, Tsao-Chun returns and a new picture is hung to welcome him. Firecrackers and other noisemakers fill the air to scare away the old year and the evil spirits.

Breakaway's Chinese New Year

Lord Buddha's birthday May It is observed on the eighth day of the Fourth Moon. Legend has it that at the moment of Buddha's birth, nine dragons spat on the water. Buddha is the sacred name given to a man called Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of the Buddhist religion.

Dragon Boat Festival May is celebrated in China on the fifth day of the fifth moon or month of the lunar calendar and for this reason is sometimes called Double Five Day. The celebration is held in honour of a former scholar and official, Ch'u Yuan, who lived in the third century B.C. According to legend Ch'u Yuan tried to advise his king wisely but the king did not want to hear what he was saying so he banished Ch'u Yuan to an isolated village, where he lived for seven years writing scholarly books. When, on the fifth day of the fifth month of the seventh year, he heard that his predictions had all come true he drowned himself in the river in an act of despair.

Confucius' Birthday September Kung Chiu was born about 551 B.C. in northern China in what is now Shantung. Known by the Chinese as Kung Fu Tzu (Grand Master Kung), and westernized into the name Confucius he was the first private teacher in China and the first to devote his whole life to teaching. His teachings were both political and social in nature and strongly supported the institutions that provided his society with order-family, hierarchy, and seniority.

Breakaway's Confucius

The Chinese Moon Festival is on the 15th of the 8th lunar month. It's also known as the Mid-autumn Festival. Chinese culture is deeply imbedded in traditional festivals. Just like Christmas and Thanksgiving in the West, the Moon Festival is one of the most important traditional events for the Chinese.

Breakaway's Chinese Moon Festival

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