Chinese New Year or 'Spring Festival' is China'smost important festival and holiday time. Chinese New Year 2019 falls on Tuesday, q5, 2019, beginning a year of the Pig. China's public holiday is February 4–10, 2019.

Chinese New Year has no fixed date in the Gregorian calendar, but it’s always in the period January 21 to February 20. In recent decades, it has been the second day of a 7-day public holiday in Mainland China.

It's day 1 of China’s lunar calendar or lunar new year, which is within a day of the second new moon before the spring equinox moon phase. It's oddly called Spring Festival, with it being in winter for most of China, but that's because it "looks forward to Spring".

The main Chinese New Year activities include 1) putting up decorations, 2) eating reunion dinner with family on New Year's Eve, 3) firecrackers and fireworks, and 4) giving red envelopes and other gifts. These four things are introduced below.

Public celebrations: In many Chinese cities, from New Year's Day, traditional performances can be seen: dragon dances, lion dances, and imperial performances like an emperor's wedding. A great variety of traditional Chinese products are on offer, and rarely seen Chinese snacks. City parks and temple fairs are the places to go for this.