THE Year of Snake began on February 10 and Chinese people celebrated the Spring Festival with passion and pride. As the year's most important holiday, the Spring Festival continued until the Lantern Festival, which was on February 24 this year.

Various customs have been passed down over thousands of years to celebrate the festival. Some have been lost while others are still cherished today.

Read on to learn more about the Spring Festival customs Jiading residents follow so that you'll have a deeper understanding of the local culture.

Lantern Festival

The 15th day of the Lunar New Year is the Lantern Festival and marks the formal end of the Spring Festival.

In the daytime, people will eat tangyuan dumplings and enjoy traditional dances such as lion dance. And at night, people will light colorful flower lanterns and guess lantern riddles.

In Jiading, flower lanterns will be displayed from February 22-27. Children also enjoy pulling rabbit-shaped lanterns on the street.

Festival shopping

Booths with items popular for the Spring Festival usually start to show up in markets about one month before Chinese New Year. Food is an important part of the festival and vendors sell chicken, fish, mushrooms and dried bamboo shoots. Household appliances and clothes are also popular purchases leading up to the holiday. Special items such as New Year paintings, calligraphy, fireworks and toys are also in demand.

Now online shopping for Chinese New Year items is growing in popularity.

Dusting the dust

It's still an important custom ahead of the Spring Festival for many Chinese families. People will clean their house thoroughly at the end of the year. All the furniture needs to be cleaned, the quilts and bed sheets washed and the windows wiped. It is called "Dusting the dust" in Jiading area.

Cooking rice cakes

Jiading rice cakes are mainly made of round-grained rice mixed with sticky rice. People will add sugar, red dates, red beans, pine nuts, walnuts and honey dates. The cakes are topped with "red and green juliennes," a seasoning made of orange peels and green peppers.

Jiading rice cakes are mostly cooked at homes. It can be either enjoyed for the festival or gifted to others. However, fewer and fewer people know how to cook authentic Jiading rice cakes.

Kitchen God

According to an ancient legend, there is a Kitchen God in each household, who was sent by the Jade Emperor to monitor the behavior of people. On the seventh day before the lunar year, the Kitchen God will return to the Heavenly Palace and report to the Jade Emperor about the family.

To prevent the Kitchen God from delivering bad reports to the Jade Emperor, people hold a ceremony for sending the Kitchen God. The family will present malt sugar and arrowheads to the god, hoping the sugar will stick to the god's teeth and make him unable to malign them.

Sealing wells

In old times, people usually did washing with river water and got drinking water from wells. They believed the inexhaustible well was guarded by a God Boy. When the Spring Festival approached, people would store enough water for the festival, then cap the well and seal it with red paper. After that, people would light candles and put some fruit on the cap to show their respect to the god. The well would be reopened after the stored water ran out. But since few people still use wells, this custom has gradually disappeared.

New Year's Eve dinner

On New Year's Eve, Chinese people go home and have reunion dinner with their family. It's called nianyefan, or New Year's Eve dinner. It usually is the most lavish meal of the year and regarded as the most important Spring Festival custom. After dinner, the family will light fireworks and paste Spring Festival scrolls.

People will not go to bed until midnight or later. Those who owe debts will pay them back before New Year's Eve dinner as it is not good to start a new year owing money.

New Year's greetings

One of the most popular customs during the Spring Festival is to give New Year's greetings.

In old times the juniors should even say greeting words to seniors while on their knees. Then, the seniors shall give gift money to them. Friends will also visit each other. When on the way, they will also say greeting words to each other.

Nowadays, there are a lot of new ways to send New Year's greetings. It doesn't matter in which way you send your greetings, the kindness behind it really matters.

Ancestor worship

On the morning of Lunar New Year's Day, people will put on new clothes and eat tangyuan, small dumpling balls made of glutinous rice flour with sesame, bean paste, sugar and edible oil as filling, as a symbol of reunion in the New Year.

Then, it's time to worship the gods and their ancestors. They will hang pictures of ancestors and worship the ancestors with kowtows and burning incense. The pictures will be hung for one whole day and then rolled up for future use.

New Year's soup

During the Spring Festival in old days, each family in Jiading would make a delicious soup. The custom originated in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) by Tang Shisheng, a Jiading teacher. The story says Tang had many good students who came to visit him during the Spring Festival every year, but he was too poor to treat them with a good meal and had to make a soup with leftovers.

Tang's recipe was later learned by others. Ingredients gradually changed from leftovers to fresh food. But now, the recipe is lost, and few people know how to cook it.

God of Wealth

The fifth day of the Lunar New Year holidays is the special day for welcoming the God of Wealth. This tradition is still followed by most people today.

During the Spring Festival, most of the shops will close. But they will all open up on the fifth day of the New Year holidays. Before they open business in the morning, the shops will light firecrackers and worship the God of Wealth. At the midnight of that day, firecrackers will also be exploded and fireworks set off.

Weighing children

On the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, parents usually weigh their kids to record their growth until they are 10 years old. In ancient tales, the first six days were the birthdays of chicken, dog, sheep, cow, horse and pig, respectively. The seventh day is the birthday of man. However, this custom is not so popular nowadays.