It is like an invisible river of time, folding the sacrificial stove fire from over four thousand years ago, the New Year’s Eve ceremony in the Han Dynasty, the poetry and wine of the Yuan Dynasty in the Tang and Song Dynasties, the renaming documents of the Republic of China, and even the upcoming “9-day super long holiday” in 2026 into the same calendar system.
In other words, your hesitation in choosing which Spring Festival couplet to buy in front of the supermarket shelf at this moment is an action on the same cultural chain as Emperor Wu of Han’s decision to “build a new moon” in 104 BC.
Laba: Make An Appointment With A Pot Of Porridge
Before the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month, the entrance to the Spring Festival was a bowl of Congee.
The record of Congee in the morning at the Yonghe Temple in Beijing shows that the number of people queuing up on the day of the Laba Festival in 2025 will exceed 50000, and the number of people aged 18-35 will account for 47% (Beijing Municipal Commission of Ethnic and Religious Affairs, 2025).
In other words, young people are using the ritual sense of “receiving Congee at 0 o’clock” to pull intangible cultural heritage from the museum back to the street.
There is no national standard for the formula of Laba Congee, but there is an invisible standard: 8 kinds of grains must be collected to symbolize Laba. What I mean is that it boils down the abstract worship of “harvest” in agricultural society into a sweet taste that can be taken away with a bite.
Xiao Nian: The “Bribery Theory” Of Zao Wang Sugar
On the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month in the north and the 24th day of the twelfth lunar month in the south, the kitchen suddenly becomes a temporary ‘office’.
The maltose placed in front of the Kitchen God statue is called “sticky mouth candy” by the older generation – it is said to stick to the teeth of the Kitchen God and make him say “good things from heaven”.
It may sound like a joke, but there is a set of farming ethics involved: before eating, let the “household god” taste the sweetness, which is equivalent to reporting the family KPI in advance.
Now some communities have upgraded “sacrificial stoves” to “live stoves”: young people spread candy on the camera circle, the number of online viewers has exceeded 100000, and the barrage comments are “sweet to the head.”
Once traditional symbols gain traffic entry, the year will prematurely “die” – no, it’s “social fire”.
House Sweeping: A Family Version Of ‘Separation And Separation’
On the 24th day of the twelfth lunar month, known as “House Sweeping Day”, data from the Beijing home service platform “58 Home” showed that the daily order volume surged by 320% compared to usual, and the search volume for the keyword “deep cleaning” exceeded one million (58.com Data Research Institute, 2025).
The ancients used bamboo to tie brooms with the intention of “removing dust”; Spending money on a 3-hour/square meter cleaning service nowadays is also a metaphor for “packing up old luck and throwing it away”.
The difference is that after the robotic vacuum cleaner participates, “sweeping the room” becomes a ritual script so written by humans and algorithms: the machine is responsible for physical dust removal, while the human is responsible for psychological restart.
Spring Festival Couples: From Peach Symbols To Algorithms
The Book of Later Han records that the four characters “Shentu Yulei” were written on peach wood boards, which is the earliest 1.0 version of Spring Festival couplets.
Spring Couplets 3.0 will appear on the “Taobao Maker Festival” in 2025: AI will automatically generate hidden couplets based on the emotional curve of users’ social media circles over the past year, with name hexagrams in horizontal bars.
A pair sold for 199 yuan and sold out over 40000 sets within 48 hours (Alibaba Research Institute, 2025).
The problem is, when the horizontal banner turns into ‘Big data calculates that I will become rich next year’, are people buying blessings or a self data-driven performance art?
Spring Festival Eve: Centralization And Decentralization Of The New Year’s Eve Dinner
The 2026 Spring Festival holiday will be adjusted to February 15-23, a total of 9 days, which is jokingly referred to as the “longest Spring Festival holiday in history” (General Office of the State Council, 2025). Holidays have become longer, and the New Year’s Eve dinner has adopted a “dual center” mode:
- Online “prefabricated dishes+live ,’live cooking”: Hema announced that the sales of prefabricated dishes on New Year’s Eve in 2025 will increase by 210% year on year, of which the single product of “Buddha jumps over the wall” will exceed 100 million yuan.
- Offline “reverse Spring Festival travel rush”: According to data from Qunar.com, in the first three days of the Chinese New Year in 2025, the number of air tickets for people aged 60 and above to first tier cities increased by 55% year-on-year. Parents going to their children’s workplaces for the Chinese New Year has become the “mobile center kitchen”.
In other words, reunion is no longer determined by geography, but by which kitchen ignites first.
Money: From “Red Paper Wrapped In Copper Coins” To “Digital Red Envelopes To Combat Inflation”
The Western Han Dynasty first saw the phenomenon of ‘disliking money’, the Republic of China introduced paper money red envelopes, and in 2014, WeChat red envelopes made New Year’s money cloud based.
On New Year’s Eve 2025, the total number of WeChat red envelope transactions reached 17 billion, with an average single transaction amount of 59 yuan, an increase of 8.7% compared to 2024 outperforming the CPI of the same period (Financial Consumer Rights Protection Bureau of the People’s Bank of China, 2025).
Key changes: The amount of red envelopes is getting smaller and the cover is getting fuller.
The “post-00s” are willing to spend 30 yuan to buy a “Loopy the Year of the Loong Limited Skin”, but only give 20 yuan to their cousin.
On the surface, it is stingy, but in essence, it transfers the social attribute of “lucky money” from “money” to “cover”.
What I mean is that when inflation causes red envelopes to shrink, creativity becomes a new hard currency.
Show: Legalization Of Collective Staying Up Late
The Spring Festival Gala premiered in 1983 and for the first time in 40 years, its ratings fell below 20% (CSM Media Research, 2025). The concept of ‘staying up late’ has not disappeared, but has been redirected to different screens:
- Bilibili’s “Spring Festival Gala” peak online reached 46 million simultaneously, with the keyword “Happy New Year” trending at a rate of 14000 views per second.
- The Tiktok “New Year Lianmai” live broadcast room has 63% of the users after 00. Top 3 content: game black, tarot card, nail salon course in the Year of the Loong.
But in reality, people still need a ‘collective late night’ to confirm that they have synchronized into a new time zone.
Grade 1: Folding Of Spring Festival Greetings
In 2025, the popular challenge of Tiktok, “Zuoyi cross dressing”, will bend over and graft the Chinese costume cosplay in three seconds, and the broadcast volume will exceed 12 billion.
Some people believe that this is frivolous, but the Intangible Cultural Heritage Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences points out that simplifying body rituals is inevitable in urbanization (Zhang Xiaoming, 2025).
The key is that as long as the “curve” of bending down is preserved, whether it’s 0.3 seconds or 3 minutes, the confirmation of the same set of cultural codes is being completed during the New Year greetings.
Fifth Day Of The Spring Festival: Double Time To Welcome The God Of Wealth
In the early morning of the fifth day of the lunar new year, the “God of Wealth” firecrackers will be banned from burning in the outer ring of Shanghai by 2025, but the download volume of “electronic firecrackers” will increase by 380% year-on-year (Shanghai Public Security Bureau, 2025).
At the same time, the China Securities Regulatory Commission designated the fifth day of the lunar new year as “Investor Education Day”, and 30 securities firms across the country simultaneously broadcasted the “God of Wealth Arrives – Rational Investment Open Course”.
The traditional God of Wealth and Regulatory Number are framed together, seemingly absurd, but they are stitched together with folk customs and risks on the same day:
To achieve instant wealth while also being legal; We need to have both abundant financial resources and risky investments.
Yuanxiao (Filled Round Balls Made Of Glutinous Rice-Flour For Lantern Festival): The Ultimate Performance Of Lantern Festival And “Night Economy”
In 2025, the “Shangyuan Lantern Festival” at the Forbidden City in Beijing will open for the first time at night, with 20000 tickets sold out in 60 seconds, driving an average premium of 2.3 times for surrounding hotels (Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, 2025).
Guangzhou, Chengdu, and Xi’an simultaneously launched “subway+lantern ,lantern festival” joint tickets, with a 45% year-on-year increase in subway passenger flow on the same day.
In other words, the period of the Spring Festival is no longer determined by the calendar, but by the city’s electricity consumption——
Whoever keeps the light on until the end will officially close the account of ‘year’.
After The Spring Festival, There Are Still Many More Years Left
The end of Chinese Spring Festival is not Yuanxiao (Filled round balls made of glutinous rice-flour for Lantern Festival), but the “aftertaste curve” in everyone’s heart.
It could be a box of frozen dumplings that hasn’t been eaten, or it could be a winter field that has rolled back inch by inch outside the high-speed train window on the way back.
The ‘year’ forcibly merges agricultural time, industrial time, and internet time, giving modern people a chance to ‘reset their tables’.
When the countdown ends, the screen dims, and the red lantern goes out, we still have to return to the grid room, laboratory, and cabin windows.
But you know, the sweetness of Laba Congee, the stickiness of maltose and the couplet written by AI have secretly buried a “lunar chip” in your body.
No matter which time zone or language you are speaking next year, as long as it clicks, you will be like this moment——
I miss home and want to be a fellow traveler in time again.
References
- Beijing Municipal Commission of Ethnic and Religious Affairs (2025). ‘Data bulletin of Lama Temple Laba Congee in 2025 Official website of Beijing Municipal Government. [Link]
- 58 Same City Data Research Institute (2025). ‘Report on Domestic Service Demand for December 24th 58 in the same city.
- Liangshan Prefecture Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism (2025). -Summary of the live broadcast of the “Cloud based New Year Pig Festival” in Butuo County
- Alibaba Research Institute (2025). ‘2025 Taobao Creation Festival (A Spring Festival Couplet Consumption Observation
- Financial Consumer Rights Protection Bureau of the People’s Bank of China (2025). ‘2025 New Year’s Eve Digital Red Envelope Monitoring Briefing.
- CSM Media Research (2025). ‘2025 Spring Festival Viewing and Behavior Multi screen Monitoring Report
- Zhang Xiaoming, Intangible Cultural Heritage Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (2025). ‘Research on the challenge of “bowing and cross dressing” and simplification of body rituals
- Shanghai Public Security Bureau (2025). -Fireworks and Firecrackers Management Data during the Spring Festival of 2025
- Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism (2025). ‘Analysis of the Impact of the Palace Museum Lantern Festival on the Surrounding Economy
- The General Office of the State Council (2025). ‘Notice on the arrangement of some holidays in 2026 The website of the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China.
