逛廟會 Temple Fair
Temple fair, usually held outside temples, is a kind of folk custom in China. During the Spring Festival, temple fair is one of the most important activities, in which there are such performances as acrobatics and Wushu, numerous kinds of local snacks and many kinds of things for everyday life. In recent years, the temple fair has become a place for people to appreciate the traditional art and experience the traditional life.
貼年畫 Pasting New Year Prints
The custom of pasting New Year Prints originated from the tradition of placing Door Gods on the external doors of houses. With the creation of board carvings, New Year paintings cover a wide range of subjects. The most famous ones are Door Gods, Surplus Year after Year, Three Gods of Blessing, Salary and Longevity, An Abundant Harvest of Crops, Thriving Domestic Animals and Celebrating Spring. Four producing areas of New Year Print are Tɑohuɑwu of Suzhou, Yɑngliuqing of Tianjin, Wuqiɑng of Hebei and Weifang of Shangdong. Now the tradition of pasting New Year paintings is still kept in rural China, while it is seldom followed in cities.
貼春聯 Pasting Spring Couplets
“The Spring Couplet”, also called “couplet” and “a pair of antithetical phrases”, is a special form of literature in China. The Spring Couplet is composed of two antithetical sentences on both sides of the door and a horizontal scroll bearing an inscription, usually an auspicious phrase, above the gate. The sentence pasting on the right side of the door is called the first line of the couplet and the one on the left the second line. On the eve of the Spring Festival, every household will paste on doors a spring couplet written on red paper to give a happy and prosperous atmosphere of the Festival. In the past, the Chinese usually wrote their own spring couplet with a brush or asked others to do for them, while nowadays, it is common for people to buy the printed spring couplet in the market.
Sweeping the dust掃塵的英語介紹中英對照：
“Dust” is homophonic with “chen”(塵)in Chinese, which means old and past. In this way, “sweeping the dust” before the Spring Festival means a thorough cleaning of houses to sweep away bad luck in the past year. This custom shows a good wish of putting away old things to welcome a new life. In a word, just before the Spring Festival comes, every household will give a thorough cleaning to bid farewell to the old year and usher in the new.
“Dust”與“塵”是諧音(塵在漢語中的意思是舊的和過去的)。這樣，“在春節前掃塵”是指徹底清潔房屋掃除過去一年的厄運。此習俗表達了收拾舊事物，歡迎新生活的美好愿望。總之，就在春節到來之前，為了告別舊年迎接新年，家家戶戶都會徹底打掃一下房屋。