Chinese New Year’s E-Celebrations

When the colour red conquers people's daily lives, with restaurants hanging red lanterns, shop windows displaying red new arrivals and nearly all APPs giving their icons a red tint, the Chinese New Year is around the corner, being ready to provide a fitting finale for this year.

The Chinese New Year is far more than a festival, and it is literally an essential part of Chinese culture: you cannot avoid it whenever you talk about China. Some celebrating activities are well known by people all over the world, such as making dumplings, giving red envelopes and watching CCTV's Spring Festival Gala. However, things have changed a bit because of the Internet. Let's see some e-celebrations and catch up with fashion!

"Do you have Jingye Fu?"

Collecting cards does not only prevail among children, and it is obsessing adults now. Alipay, a payment service APP, started a collection campaign this year and has promised to award total 215,000,000 RMB to those who have all five kinds of cards. These cards are Fuqiang Fu, Hexie Fu, Youshan Fu, Aiguo Fu and Jingye Fu, respectively meaning prosperity, harmony, kindness, patriotism and dedication. Among the five Fus, Jingye Fu is the hardest to collect as its quantity is limited.

Jingye Fu

Because Fu can be shared among friends, people ask all of their friends---even acquaintances--- to exchange Fu. It is a good chance to get in touch with old classmates and colleagues. And "do you have Jingye Fu" is no doubt the hottest sentence to start a conversation.

"I’ve gotten five cents!!!"

Traditionally, a red packet is wrapped in a red envelope and is given to children by their elders. Because of WeChat, the red packet has been given a new birth, being highly popular on this social network APP. WeChat users can give red packets to their friends and members in the same WeChat groups. Those red packets are paid by bank accounts linked to WeChat, so they don’t require physical envelopes or cash.

WeChat red packet

Actually, the red packet is always the ultimate weapon to call out all members in a WeChat group. You decide the total amount and quantity of the red packet and then wait to watch a bloody competition. The red packet is usually divided up within seconds, with nearly all the group members grabbing it. In fact, there isn't very much money in the red packet because of its quantity—five yuan can be divided into 50 portions! So getting five cents is really a big achievement.

"Actually, I am not going to watch CCTV this year."

Watching CCTV's Spring Festival Gala with all family members is one of the most important activities in the Chinese New Year. Though this gala is reported to be the one watched by the largest number of people, it seems to have become less attractive to the young.

Many TV stations are preparing their own Spring Festival Galas now, and they usually invite new stars who are popular on the Internet or who are loved by young people. Compared with CCTV, these TV stations have more freedom when designing the galas, and they are willing to embrace the Internet culture. These galas are available both on PC and TV, but they are watched online more. On the one hand, TV is conquered by the older generations that are resolute fans of CCTV's gala. On the other hand, the audience can interact with others and performers if they use a computer.