China celebrates its Lunar New Year on Tuesday, marking the start of a 15-day Spring Festival.
The occasion is also observed in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines as well as in Chinese communities across the world, not least in London’s West End, the biggest gathering of revellers outside of Asia.
Each year is assigned a spirit animal from the Chinese zodiac. Here are five facts for the Year of the Pig.
Fireworks are lit to banish monsters
The Lunar New Year is a season of heavy symbolism.
The colour red is associated with luck and paper lanterns and banners in that shade are hung in the home bearing poetic inscriptions while children are gifted cash in red envelopes.
Householders carry out a thorough spring clean to rid the home of the past year’s accumulated dust and grime.
Among the most interesting of the season's superstitions is the use of fireworks to banish the nian, a mythical half-lion, half-dragon beast. According to folklore, the monster, believed to prey on children, is frightened away by the noise and smoke.
The nian dance troupes who parade through town centres banging gongs and drums serve the same purpose.
It’s the world’s largest annual human migration
The Spring Festival is one of the busiest times of the year anywhere in the world.
The Chinese government’s National Development and Reform Commission expects 2.9 billion journeys to be undertaken during the period by plane, train and automobile as families come together for the traditional Nian Ye Fan reunion dinner.
Fortunately, the country’s transport infrastructure is up to the task.
That feast, incidentally, includes poultry, pork and fish dishes, spring rolls, noodles and vegetable taro cakes. Jiaozi dumplings are also customary in the north and niangao, a glutinous rice cake, in the south.
The travel rush over the break is known as “chunyun” and this year’s traffic marks an 0.8 per cent rise on 2018.
Another record-breaking fixture of the season is China Central Television’s Spring Festival Gala, a four-hour spectacular broadcast since 1982 that routinely attracts 800 million viewers and is thought to be the world’s most-watched programme.
You can rent a partner
As with all big family gatherings, the pressure to impress is immense and the chance of glowering parental disapproval high.
In a society with traditional expectations, singletons often dread the inevitable interrogation about their love lives.
But there is a solution.
Chinese dating websites commonly offer fake dates for hire for between 500 and 6,000 Chinese renminbi (£57 to £683), the perfect way to sidestep the nagging.
The Jade Emperor’s Great Race determined the Chinese zodiac
According to Chinese mythology, the zodiac was created by the Jade Emperor who invited the animals to cross the river and come to him on his birthday to discuss the calendar, with the promise that the first 12 to arrive would be honoured with a place on the wheel.
The cat and rat agreed a pact to go together, taking a lift on the back of a lumbering ox. The rat pushed the cat into the water, leapt off the ox and won the Great Race. This is why the cat does not appear and why cats have resented rodents ever since.
The ox arrived second, followed by the tiger and a rabbit, hopping across on a log, his passage eased thanks to a gust of wind blown by a dragon, who secured fifth place for this act of generosity.
A snake startled a horse to beat it into sixth before a goat, monkey and rooster arrived by raft. The penultimate arrival was the dog, who should have been a natural swimmer but spent too long bathing in the cool water.
The pig came last, arriving late as a result of his natural slothfulness, having stopped to eat and take a nap.
This year, Peppa Pig is its unofficial mascot
Peppa Pig – every British parent’s favourite programme, the ultimate toddler-silencer – began being shown in China in 2015 and has since been viewed more than 60 billion times on television and online.
The character has proven surprisingly controversial however, having been adopted as an ironic icon of slacker culture by the nation’s youth. Cartoons are no laughing matter in China – Disney’s Winne the Pooh was famously banned after his likeness was adopted to satirise premier Xi Jinping, whom he was thought to resemble.
But despite the state’s concerns about the corrupting influence of western culture, Peppa’s popularity is too big to ignore and the character has found herself the unofficial icon of the Year of the Pig.
The Hong Kong garrison of the People’s Liberation Army even created a likeness of Peppa out of a giant tank formation in an image that went viral on Chinese social media.
Use of the pigs from George Orwell's totalitarian allegory Animal Farm (1945) has not been tolerated so readily.
