By Tigist Sernesa
The Chinese Embassy in Ethiopia hosted the spring festival of the Chinese New Year on 23 January. The festival which is going to be celebrated by the Chinese people and some Asian countries, is an annual event based on the Chinese calendar.
The exodus is on, within and outside China, Chinese people travelling to unite with their families and friends for the New Year celebrations. The New Year holiday is the most revered occasion in the Chinese calendar.
Also called the Spring Festival, it marks the beginning of a lunar year according to the traditional Chinese calendar. Businesses in China close for 7 days to allow people to travel and join their families for the festivities.
The intriguing part is that the celebrations fall between January 21 and February 20, on the Gregorian calendar that is adopted in most parts of the world.
To unravel this, we look at the traditional Chinese calendar that is used to determine holidays, festivals and zodiac signs in China.
Zhao Zhiyuan, Chinese Ambassador to Ethiopia, warmly welcomed the attendants of the event, further expounding that traditional Chinese society uses a lunisolar calendar, which combines aspects of both lunar and solar calendars.
A lunar calendar is based on cycles of the moon, with sighting a new moon marking the beginning of another month. Each cycle is about 29.5 days.
A lunar year has 12 months, and between 354 to 384 days (12*29.5). A lunar year is 11 days shorter than a solar calendar. For this reason, the lunar calendar tends to drift out of the cycle of seasons. To correct this a process called intercalation is undertaken, in which a 13th month, intercalary, is added approximately after three years.
During the occasion senior government officials from Ethiopian culture and sports Ministry, a number of Chinese community members residing in Addis and friends of China from Ethiopia were taking part in this very event. Multiple Chinese traditional songs and martial art activities, including Ethiopian traditional music were part and parcel of the evening as well.//