Chinese Culture - Part two

Chinese festivity that is unique to Chinese people:

Chinese New Year's Eve  is the most anticipated night during this period. On this night, Chinese families gather happily under one roof to celebrate. Each household celebrates by eating a New Year’s Eve dinner. When the meal is over, the whole family will sit, chat and play games until midnight, when they will stay up to see in the new year. In recent years, however, watching Spring Festival Gala has become a new tradition. The Spring Festival Gala is a four-hour-long program shown on China’s CCTV, and it includes an assortment of performances such as singing, dancing and Comic dialogue, crosstalk.

春节 Chūnjié ( between 21st Jan and 20th Feb)/ Spring-FestivalSpring Festival is the longest and most ceremonious holiday for the Chinese people. The most significant aspect of the Chinese New Year is to be able to reunite with family members. Most Chinese people work far away from their hometowns and usually only return home a couple of times a year.

元宵节 Yuánxiāo jié (15th of 1st lunar month) - The Lantern Festival is traditionally the last day of the Chinese New Year period. It became a festival about 2,000 years ago. Billions of lanterns and giant lanterns and drone displays make the time festive.

清明节 Qīngmíng jié - Qingming Festival is Chinese people's day for visiting graves and burial grounds to pray their respects to their ancestors. It's known as Tomb Sweeping Festival in English. Many Chinese also go for a picnic during Qingming Festival to enjoy the picturesque scenery of spring.

端午节 Duānwǔ jié  - The most popular and representative activity of Dragon Boat Festival is dragon boat racing. Dragon Boat Festival falls on month 5 day 5 of the Chinese lunar calendar (around mid-June). During this traditional festival in China, people customarily eat rice dumplings.

Double Seventh Day - How to Celebrate China's Valentine’s Day - The Qixi Festival (Double Seventh Festival) is one of Chinese traditional festivals, and also known as the Chinese Valentine's Day. It's based on a romantic legend about a weaver girl and an ox herd. It falls on the 7th day of the 7th Chinese lunar month.

中秋节 Zhōngqiū jié - Also known as “Moon Festival”, Mid-Autumn festival is a harvest festival that falls on the 15th day of the 8th month according to the Chinese lunar calendar. The Mid-Autumn Festival was so named because it is always celebrated in the middle of the autumn season, a time when the moon is at its fullest and brightest. A popular tradition of the Mid-Autumn Festival is to eat mooncakes. Thus you may also hear this festival referred to as the “Mooncake Festival”.

冬节 Dōng jié - This is another important traditional Chinese festival, and it falls between 22nd of December and the 5th of January. Chinese people figured out the Winter solstice using ancient equipment over 2500 years ago during the Spring-Autumn period (770-476 BC). Winter solstice marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year. It is traditional for people to eat dumplings and 汤圆 (tongyuan) during this period. Most Malaysian Chinese still celebrate this day despite Malaysia is a tropical country with the sun shining all year round.

 

The Chinese model of health:

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) A system is comprised of everything that creates and sustains it. Everything is interconnected and interdependent. If all of the parts of a system are in harmony with one another, then the whole system is in harmony. Disturb one thing, and you create a disturbance that ripples through the whole system. This principle applies to any and all systems. For example, it applies as equally to a human being as it does to a family, community, or environment. So we must take care to consider our actions and to take things as a whole. Two concepts that are unique and fundamental to Chinese medicine are Qi (usually translated as "vital energy") and yin and yang (the harmony of all the opposite elements and forces that make up existence).

Yin and Yang - In Chinese philosophy, Yin-yang, which translates into “dark-bright,” describes the notion that everything in nature consists of two paradoxical phases or energies.  In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the concept of Yin and Yang serves as the foundation for understanding health, as well as diagnosing and treating illnesses. Yin-yang is first referenced in the I Ching (Book of Changes), which was written around 700BC. According to it, all phenomena is composed of two opposite but mutually interconnected forces, known as yin and yang.

Qi - Most major cultural traditions identify a “vital energy” that guides someone’s physical and mental processes; Chinese philosophy calls this vital energy qi and describes it as the body’s innate intelligence — the intangible yet measurable way we maintain what’s known as homeostasis, or the body’s ability to regulate its internal environment to create good health. This is similar to the Maori concept of “mauri”, the human's energy that keeps us alive.

The five elements - outlines the relationship between the different elements in nature and the life force, or "qi," that flows through them. The essential elements are wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. Each individual is a blend of these elements, and to be truly healthy, they need to be balanced. In this conceptual system, the five elements are constantly moving and changing, each becoming dominant at different times in the natural cycle and affecting an individual's health. The five elements are used to interpret and explain physiology and pathology. Each element is associated with different body organs, colours, flavours, senses, emotions, and weather.

Why Chinese believe in acupuncture?  Acupuncture is believed to keep the balance between Yin (associated with the parasympathetic nervous system) and the Yang (associated with the sympathetic nervous system). This allows for the normal flow of Qi associated with neural transmission throughout the body and restores health to the mind and body.

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