MKsports South China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on January 22, 2025. Photo: VCG" src="https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2025/2025-01-26/89604c23-59e4-46b9-8580-e2c3465c8099.jpeg" />

Spring Festival lanterns in Nanning, South China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on January 22, 2025. Photo: VCG

 
Editor’s Note:
For many Chinese, the heart of the Spring Festival lies in family reunion. This year, what makes the festival more special is that the Spring Festival has been inscribed as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This gives the Chinese festival a global connotation. The Global Times selects the opinions of some foreign experts to share their experiences and understanding of the Spring Festival. 

Zivadin Jovanovic, president of the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals who served as the minister of foreign affairs of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between 1998 and 2000

Spreading the messages of reunion, togetherness and the highest significance of family life, the Spring Festival has always played an extraordinary role in the long history of Chinese civilization. In the new era the Spring Festival gives steadfastness, inspiration and strength for rejuvenation and unprecedented progress in overall modern development of China. Bringing together family members, relatives and friends, it transcends all geographic distances and challenges, contributing to the basic sense of unity, optimism and synergy of the whole great Chinese nation.

The Spring Festival brings together in unity and harmony not only the people in China but Chinese all over the world contributing to better understanding and cultural exchange among cultures and civilizations. With the growing number of Chinese citizens living and working in Serbia, the Spring Festival has been celebrated with many colorful and joyful get-together events and manifestations in the public squares, promenades and restaurants, in the capital City of Belgrade, as well as other places in Serbia. All these events have been contributing to the enrichment of the cultural and social life of Serbia, strengthening people to people exchange and mutual respect.

I regard the Spring Festival to be a global reminder of the importance of safeguarding the basic traditional values – first of all, the value of normal, healthy family life being the irreplaceable precondition for stable, prosperous and humanity-centered society. Today, the Spring Festival is an answer to the prevailing contemporary tendency of constant hurry, egoism, lack of solidarity and inclination to surrogate values.

It is globally encouraging that the Spring Festival and the Chinese New Year have been yet another great value of Chinese civilization inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Richard Cullen, an adjunct professor of the Faculty of Law, Hong Kong University 

After I first moved to live in Hong Kong in 1991, I read the work of Professor Robert Allinson who wrote that: “For the Chinese mind, the value of the family is self-evident… the family represents a natural extension of oneself.” This, he argued, was not so, in the same way, in the West.

I found this observation convincing at the time. And its validity has been confirmed ever since, especially as I have experienced each Chinese New Year. This is an exceptional, family-centered festival celebrated within the world’s largest and oldest enduring civilization. 

The Spring Festival warmly connects children to adults and adults to children and to senior family members. It re-connects mature adults to vivid memories from their childhood. And the marvelous “little red envelope” is an innovation that has cleverly democratized the act of giving.

The Spring Festival is a central fixture on the calendars of many nations across East Asia and Southeast Asia, including Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. 

In fact, Chinese migration has long since extended to all corners of the globe so the Spring Festival has travelled with them. Thus, each year you find Chinese New Year festivities unfolding from Finland in the far north of Europe to Ushuaia at the southern tip of Argentina. Meanwhile, the US Postal Service now issues a new stamp to mark the start of each Chinese New Year.

Bendigo is a famous gold-mining city in Australia. It introduced an “Easter Fair” in 1871. Easter time and Chinese New Year are both governed by the Lunar Calendar, with Easter following just after Chinese New Year each year. Soon after it was established, the Bendigo Easter Fair incorporated the local Chinese community as an integral part of this event. Ever since then, magnificent ceremonial Chinese dragons have been a paramount attraction.

Chinese New Year is an intensely social occasion that has been observed for over 3,000 years. Today it is a festival with remarkable human appeal that is recognized around the globe.