2027 edition🇨🇳 BeijingFood & Harvest

Chinese New Year

The largest annual migration of human beings on earth.

Dates

17 February – 3 March 2027

Location

Municipality, China

Duration

16 days

140

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hrs

min

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Read the story

The story

What it is, and why it matters

Category: Food & Harvest
Tradition: Folk & Dynastic
Attendance: 1.5 billion observers
Region: Beijing, Municipality
UNESCO: Not listed

LunarDragonReunion

Roughly three billion journeys are made in the six weeks around it. The festival is not really about the fireworks — it is about who you are sitting next to.

The new year is the second new moon after the winter solstice, which puts it between 21 January and 20 February. Each year takes one of twelve animals and one of five elements; the cycle repeats every sixty years.

Public celebration runs fifteen days, closing with the Lantern Festival on the first full moon. In Beijing the temple fairs — Ditan, Longtan, Changdian — reopen for the whole fortnight with acrobats, snacks and puppet theatre.

Countdown to 2027

140

days

hrs

min

sec

See the month Food & Harvest

Traditions

What actually happens

Red envelopes (hongbao) — cash given by elders, digitally as often as on paper now. Reunion dinner on new year's eve, with dishes chosen for their homophones.

01Red envelopes (hongbao) — cash given by elders, digitally as often as on paper now.
02Reunion dinner on new year's eve, with dishes chosen for their homophones.
03Lion and dragon dance to clear the old year's bad luck and make noise for it.
04Lantern Festival on day fifteen — riddles on lanterns and tangyuan sweet dumplings.

Food

The table, widened

Fish (yú, surplus), dumplings (yuán, ingot-shaped), nian gao (rising year).

01Fish (yú, surplus), dumplings (yuán, ingot-shaped), nian gao (rising year).
02Whole chicken, longevity noodles, and a hot pot that is never allowed to run dry.

Music

Sound of the crowd

Gongs and firecrackers rather than melody. Temple fairs use guban and suona; the soundtrack of the modern holiday is the same two Cantopop standards played in every shopping mall for three weeks.

Religion

Why this date

The opening ritual is a household one: offerings to the kitchen god, whose paper effigy is burned so he can report to the Jade Emperor, then replaced on new year's day so he returns with good news.

History

How it survived

The holiday's structure is Shang and Zhou dynasty in origin; the firecracker element arrived with gunpowder in the Tang. In 1912 the Republic tried to move the new year to 1 January. In 1928 it was banned outright, and reinstated in 1949 — by then the migration had become irreversible.

Gallery

Frames from the field

6 images · Beijing · 2027

Timeline

How it got here

c. 1000 BCE
Ancestral rites
Autumn and winter sacrifices to ancestors set the shape of the spring festival.
9th c.
Gunpowder
Bamboo crackers are replaced by the firecracker we still ban and still set off.
1912
Republican reform
The new year is formally moved to 1 January; the lunar holiday survives privately.
Today
Three billion trips
Chunyun becomes the largest recurring human migration in history.

Travel & practical