Chinese New Year is a festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. Lunar New Year is spectacular, loud, and for many cultures across Asia the most important festival of the year. In many cultures, each year is also associated with an animal from the zodiac. Often the animals are the same across different Asian countries, including China, South Korea, North Korea, Singapore and Cambodia.
Because Chinese New Year is based on the lunar calendar, it occurs on a different date every year. The festival begins on the first day of the first lunar month in the calendar, and ends with the ‘Lantern Festival’ on the 15th day. In the year 2024, Chinese New Year is going to be observed from February 10 to February 15, with the Lantern Festival serving as the conclusion of the festivities.
This coming year will be the Year of the Dragon (龙), which symbolizes power, strength, and good fortune. The Dragon, also known as Loong, is the fifth of the 12-year cycle of animals that appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. The Year of the Dragon is associated with the Earthly Branch symbol 辰, pronounced ‘chen‘.
It has been proposed by one academic researcher that the Earthly Branch character may have been associated with scorpions; it may have symbolized the star Antares. In the Buddhist calendar used in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, the Dragon is replaced by the nāga. In the Gurung zodiac, the Dragon is replaced by the eagle. In the Old Turkic calendar, it is replaced by the fish or crocodile. Early Persian translations of the medieval period change the dragon to a sea serpent although in current times it is generally referred to as whale.
