Chinese New Year is also known as the Lunar New Year or Spring New Year. It is celebrated by most Asian countries including Vietnam, China and Korea. Different places call it by a different name.

It fell on Feb. 10 this year. There are all together a 12-year cycle of animal signs and their attributes, based on the lunar calendar. 2024 is the year of the dragon.

Dallas College North Lake Dallas Campus also celebrated this day with the event called Lunar Calendar.

There was red envelope which is the symbol of good luck. Everything was decorated with red color and spring rolls were distributed too. The students seemed to enjoy the event and some students had their first experience of Chinese culture.

Student Daniel Gonzales said, “The event brings everyone together and discusses the diversity being respected by saying that it spreads awareness about the culture.” He also said it is unique as they have a red envelope, known as hóngbāo in Mandarin.

People celebrate the New Year by gathering with their families. The elderly put money in the red envelope and give it to the young ones in the family who are not earning yet. Once they start to earn, they will do the same ritual in reverse. Instead of the elders providing money to the young ones, the young ones will provide money to the elderly and someone younger than them. In this way, the Chinese people celebrate their New Year.

During this time of the year, people clean their houses and decorate them with red colored lanterns, and couplets on the door and hand a big Chinese character luck on the main entrance during the New Year to welcome the gods of wealth.

In some parts of China, people hang the Mandarin characters upside down which sounds like “arriving” which means luck is arriving and spring is arriving as well.

On New Year they stay up all night because they believe that the monster will eat you if you sleep and the Chinese people use all red because the monster is afraid of red. It is where the couplets originated. People also use red firecrackers to throw away evil.

Overall, it is a festival that is enjoyed with the family by Asian people to maintain peace and prosperity in their family.

They believe people born in the year of the dragon will have characterists of being compassionate, happy, clever and direct. Other people previously born in the year of the dragon are those born in 1988, 2000, and 2012.

In the U.S. people from this tradition celebrate the New Year and, in some places, there are events regarding the Chinese New Year. Everything was decorated red and there was a dragon dance and all of that.