2012 Chinese Lunar New Year Holiday Notice

Dear Partners and Customers,

The annual Chinese Lunar New Year-Spring Festival (23th Jan. 2012), the most solemn and important festival of Chinese is just around the corner. We are pleased to share the festival joy with you and wish you have a happy and prosperous New Year!

We hereby would like to inform you of our schedule for holiday:

All GstarCAD departments will have a temporary break for holiday from 22th Jan. to 28th Jan. 2012(7 days) and resume on 29th Jan, 2012. In the meantime, we offer our apologies to you for the inconvenience during this break.

Suzhou Gstarsoft Co., Ltd

Chinese Lunar New Year Celebration

Spring Festival is the most important and solemn as well as the unique traditional festival of Chinese. Enduring thousands of years of history, it may even be one of the world’s most celebrated and traditional festivals. The Chinese Lunar Calendar names each of the twelve years after an animal. The year of 2012 is the dragon year.

Usually, Spring Festival (also named "Guo Nian") starts from the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar until the 15th of the first lunar month, or the Lantern Festival. During the 15 days period, the celebration on New Year's Eve and the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar is the climax of Spring Festival celebration. Through thousands of year's development, many customs are formed to celebrate this festival and inherited till today.

The origin of Chinese Lunar New Year festival can be traced back thousands of years, involving a serial of legends and traditions. One of the famous legends is about Nian, a cruel and ferocious monster that devours people and livestock on the New Year's Eve. In order to avoid the monster Nian, people had to escape into remote mountains on that day. One year, on the New Year's Eve, an old woman appeared and successfully helped people to drive off the monster Nian with something it feared, like red decoration, light and noise. On the morning of the next day (the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar), people visited their relatives and friends to congratulate. Ever since then, people put up red couplets on their gate, set off firecrackers and keep the house in a blaze on the whole night on New Year's Eve and exchange wishes on the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar.

There are various festivities during this festival according to customs, mainly including offering sacrifices to deities, worshiping ancestors, ringing out the old and ringing in the new, and praying for a prosperous harvest. People care about their words and deeds as well as their dress etc. during the Spring Festival. On the first day of the lunar New Year, people wear new closes and visit their friends, neighbors and relatives to exchange good wishes of "congratulations and prosperity." Some taboos are also should be noticed. For instance, it's unlucky to sweep the floor during the first five days of the Lunar New Year. Bad language, rude words and talk of death are severely frowned upon. Some activities with Chinese characteristics are can be seen to provide a grand and joyous spectacle, such as dragon and lion dance.

The customs about celebrating Chinese Spring Festival are too numerous to mention one by one. The above narration is just one small part of it, hoping to deliver our happiness, joyfulness and best wishes to you.