CBS News
The Year of the Dragon is about to begin — here’s what to know about the Lunar New Year celebration
Mario Poceski is professor of Buddhist studies and Chinese religions at the University of Florida.
Among China’s traditional holidays and celebrations, none ranks higher in importance than the Lunar New Year (農曆新年). Also known as the Spring Festival (春節), or simply Chinese New Year, it marks the beginning of the year according to the traditional lunar calendar.
The Lunar New Year usually starts sometime between late January and mid-February. In mainland China, official celebrations last for seven days as a public holiday. This Lunar New Year, which falls on Feb. 10, is the Year of the Dragon.
I’m a scholar of Chinese religious history and culture who was born in a Year of the Dragon. What fascinates me the most is how the celebrations are a reminder of the longevity and vibrancy of traditional Chinese culture.
Zhang Jingang/VCG via Getty Images
Food, gifts and celebrations
At its core, the Lunar New Year is a celebration that brings the family together. Preparations start a week in advance and include cleaning and decorating the home, as well as shopping, especially for gifts and provisions, and food preparation.
A central event is the family dinner on the eve of the new year. The choice of dishes varies, reflecting family customs and local culinary traditions. Often it includes dumplings, spring rolls, cakes, fish and pork dishes. There is also a fair amount of drinking, especially traditional wines or liquor. Many of the dishes are assigned symbolic meanings. For instance, dumplings are given the shape of gold ingots to invoke good fortune.
Other customs associated with Lunar New Year celebrations include the giving of red envelopes containing money, usually by elders to younger members of the family. The red color, which is also featured prominently in Lunar New Year decorations, symbolizes prosperity and good fortune.
Traditionally, families and local communities burn firecrackers to mark the new year and ward off monsters. According to legend, the origin of the practice goes back to a story about a monster called Nian, who is believed to have been causing great harm to some villages. In response, the villagers are said to have set off explosions to scare off the monster, and the practice caught on. However, more recently the Chinese government has been cracking down on this traditional practice on the grounds of its being dangerous and polluting.
Liao Pan/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images
Year of the Dragon
Traditionally, the dragon is an auspicious symbol of strength and power. It is also associated with good fortune, wisdom, success, protection and masculinity. In pre-modern China, it was associated with imperial rule and was prominently featured on the first Chinese flag, initially instituted by the Qing dynasty in 1862. To this day, a dragon image is often used to symbolize China itself.
Because of the dragon’s auspicious associations, dragon years tend to bring upticks in fertility rates. Considering China’s current shrinking population and deepening fertility crisis, some are expressing hope for a baby boom during the coming year, as certain parents may be motivated to bring dragon children into the world.
According to the Chinese zodiac signs, each year in the lunar cycle is associated with a particular animal. This is a 12-year cycle that repeats itself. Thus, there are 12 animals, each associated with a year in the cycle: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.
Among the popular myths about the origins of the Chinese zodiac is one about a great race initiated by the Jade Emperor, the ruler of heaven, in order to measure time. As the rat won the race, it came to be listed first among the 12 animals of the zodiac. The order of the other 11 animals reflected their final position in the race. Each of the 12 zodiac animals came to represent certain characteristics believed to shape the personalities of individuals born in those years, with the dragon often considered to be the most auspicious of all.
Origins of the lunar calendar
Traditionally, the Chinese have followed their native lunar calendar, which is based on observations and measurements of astronomical phenomena. While modern China adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1912, traditional festivals such as the Lunar New Year still follow the old lunar calendar.
The origins of the lunar calendar may go back to the dawn of Chinese civilization, traditionally associated with the legendary Xia dynasty, said to have ruled from 2070 to 1600 B.C. The origins of the Lunar New Year celebrations are also not entirely clear; some scholars believe they likely go back to the rule of the Shang dynasty, which lasted from 1600 to 1050 B.C.
Religiosity and Lunar New Year galas
While the Lunar New Year is generally centered on the theme of family bonding, religious observances are also an integral part of the festivities. These include domestic rituals associated with popular Chinese deities, such as the Kitchen God and the God of Wealth. Family members also make offerings and engage in other rituals related to ancestor worship. Commonly, these include food offerings and the burning of incense at home altars.
During this period, many people go to Buddhist or Taoist temples, as well as other places of worship. They engage in traditional forms of piety, including offering incense and praying for good luck and fortune.
A modern element in ushering in the Lunar New Year is watching the New Year’s Gala, a popular variety show that features singing, dancing, comedy and drama. It first aired in 1983, and ever since it has been broadcast countrywide by CCTV, the national TV broadcaster. It is the most-watched television program in the world, with an audience that can reach as many as 700 million viewers.
Largest human migration
In recent decades, China has experienced drastic demographic changes, especially the migration of large rural populations into big urban centers.
Additionally, China’s one-child policy has had far-reaching effects on family structures and, consequently, on traditional customs and observances.
Millions of rural children are living with their grandparents or relatives while their parents work in faraway cities. As a result, the Lunar New Year brings about the largest human migration in the world, as students and migrant workers do their best to get back to their families.
During this period, trains, buses and planes are packed with travelers, and tickets must be booked well in advance. That still remains the case this year, despite China’s gloomy economic outlook.
Celebrations outside China
The Lunar New Year is also celebrated in other parts of Asia, including Vietnam and Singapore, as well as in East Asian communities across the world. Usually, these celebrations have some unique features or assume local character. For instance, in Vietnam, where the festival is known as Tết, there is the preparation of various local dishes, along with parades and public performances.
A group of Vietnamese actors and musicians in colorful costumes perform a traditional lion dance for a business as it reopens after Tet, or the lunar new year, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (Photo by: Andy Soloman/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)/A group
In the U.S. and Australia, where there are substantial ethnically Chinese populations, Chinese New Year festivals and parades are held each year. Some of them feature the traditional dragon dances, which highlight the communal aspect of Lunar New Year festivities.
Over the centuries, the coming together for the Lunar New Year celebration has remained an important part of the cultural heritage for Chinese families, connecting the past to the present, wherever they happen to be.
This is an updated version of an article first published by The Conversation on Feb. 1, 2022. It is republished under a Creative Commons license.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Robert Towne, the Oscar-winning screenplay writer of “Shampoo,” “The Last Detail” and other acclaimed films whose work on “Chinatown” became a model of the art form and helped define the jaded allure of his native Los Angeles, has died. He was 89.
Towne “passed away peacefully surrounded by his loving family” Monday at his home in Los Angeles, his publicist Carri McClure, told CBS News in a statement. She did not provide a cause of death.
In an industry which gave birth to rueful jokes about the writer’s status, Towne for a time held prestige comparable to the actors and directors he worked with. Through his friendships with two of the biggest stars of the 1960s and ’70s, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, he wrote or co-wrote some of the signature films of an era when artists held an unusual level of creative control. The rare “auteur” among screen writers, Towne managed to bring a highly personal and influential vision of Los Angeles onto the screen.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for AFI
“It’s a city that’s so illusory,” Towne told The Associated Press in a 2006 interview. “It’s the westernmost west of America. It’s a sort of place of last resort. It’s a place where, in a word, people go to make their dreams come true. And they’re forever disappointed.”
Recognizable around Hollywood for his high forehead and full beard, Towne won an Academy Award for “Chinatown” and was nominated three other times, for “The Last Detail,” “Shampoo” and “Greystoke.” In 1997, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Writers Guild of America.
“His life, like the characters he created, was incisive, iconoclastic and entirely (original),” said “Shampoo” actor Lee Grant on X.
Towne was born Robert Bertram Schwartz in Los Angeles and moved to San Pedro after his father’s business, a dress shop, closed down because of the Great Depression. His father changed the family name to Towne.
Towne’s success came after a long stretch of working in television, including “The Man from U.N.C.L.E” and “The Lloyd Bridges Show,” and on low-budget movies for “B” producer Roger Corman. In a classic show business story, he owed his breakthrough in part to his psychiatrist, through whom he met Beatty, a fellow patient. As Beatty worked on “Bonnie and Clyde,” he brought in Towne for revisions of the Robert Benton-David Newman script and had him on the set while the movie was filmed in Texas.
Towne’s contributions were uncredited for “Bonnie and Clyde,” the landmark crime film released in 1967, and for years he was a favorite ghost writer. He helped out on “The Godfather,” “The Parallax View” and “Heaven Can Wait” among others and referred to himself as a “relief pitcher who could come in for an inning, not pitch the whole game.” But Towne was credited by name for Nicholson’s macho “The Last Detail” and Beatty’s sex comedy “Shampoo” and was immortalized by “Chinatown,” the 1974 thriller set during the Great Depression.
“Chinatown” was directed by Roman Polanski and starred Nicholson as J.J. “Jake” Gittes, a private detective asked to follow the husband of Evelyn Mulwray (played by Faye Dunaway). The husband is chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Gittes finds himself caught in a chaotic spiral of corruption and violence, embodied by Evelyn’s ruthless father, Noah Cross (John Huston).
Influenced by the fiction of Raymond Chandler, Towne resurrected the menace and mood of a classic Los Angeles film noir, but cast Gittes’ labyrinthine odyssey across a grander and more insidious portrait of Southern California. Clues accumulate into a timeless detective tale, and lead helplessly to tragedy, summed up by one of the most repeated lines in movie history, words of grim fatalism a devastated Gittes receives from his partner Lawrence Walsh (Joe Mantell): “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”
The back story of “Chinatown” has itself become a kind of detective story, explored in producer Robert Evans’ memoir, “The Kid Stays in the Picture”; in Peter Biskind’s “East Riders, Raging Bulls,” a history of 1960s-1970s Hollywood, and in Sam Wasson’s “The Big Goodbye,” dedicated entirely to “Chinatown.” In “The Big Goodbye,” published in 2020, Wasson alleged that Towne was helped extensively by a ghost writer — former college roommate Edward Taylor. According to “The Big Goodbye,” for which Towne declined to be interviewed, Taylor did not ask for credit on the film because his “friendship with Robert” mattered more.
The studios assumed more power after the mid-1970s and Towne’s standing declined. His own efforts at directing, including “Personal Best” and “Tequila Sunrise,” had mixed results. “The Two Jakes,” the long-awaited sequel to “Chinatown,” was a commercial and critical disappointment when released in 1990 and led to a temporary estrangement between Towne and Nicholson.
Around the same time, he agreed to work on a movie far removed from the art-house aspirations of the ’70s, the Don Simpson-Jerry Bruckheimer production “Days of Thunder,” starring Tom Cruise as a race car driver and Robert Duvall as his crew chief. The 1990 movie was famously over budget and mostly panned, although its admirers include Quentin Tarantino and countless racing fans. And Towne’s script popularized an expression used by Duvall after Cruise complains another car slammed him: “He didn’t slam into you, he didn’t bump you, he didn’t nudge you. He rubbed you.
“And rubbin,′ son, is racin.'”
Towne later worked with Cruise on “The Firm” and the first two “Mission: Impossible” movies. His most recent film was “Ask the Dust,” a Los Angeles story he wrote and directed that came out in 2006. Towne was married twice, the second time to Luisa Gaule, and had two children. His brother, Roger Towne, also wrote screenplays, his credits include “The Natural.”
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
