Chinese New Year, known in Mandarin as Chūnjié (春节) or Spring Festival, is the most important holiday in the Chinese calendar. It is also one of the most misunderstood outside China. Internationally, it tends to be represented through a narrow set of visual symbols — red envelopes, dragon dances, fireworks — without much attention to what actually happens across the fifteen days of the festival period, why specific rituals exist, or how the holiday has changed as China has urbanised rapidly over the past four decades. Whether one encounters Spring Festival through travel, through Chinese social circles, or through studying with an online Chinese teacher or on any platform to learn Mandarin online, a more detailed understanding of what the festival actually involves produces a considerably richer picture of Chinese social and family life.

The festival begins on the first day of the first month of the Chinese lunar calendar, which falls on a different date in the Gregorian calendar each year, typically somewhere between late January and late February. The lunar calendar on which it is based is not purely lunar but lunisolar — it incorporates solar terms to keep the calendar aligned with the agricultural year, which is why Spring Festival always falls in late winter rather than drifting through the seasons as a purely lunar calendar would produce. The year that begins with Spring Festival is identified by its position in the sixty-year cycle of animal signs and elemental combinations described in the Chinese zodiac system, and the incoming year's animal dominates the visual and commercial culture of the festival period.

The period immediately preceding Spring Festival is defined by chunyun (春运), the spring travel rush, which represents the largest annual human migration on earth. In the weeks before the festival, hundreds of millions of Chinese workers and students travel from the cities where they work and study back to their home towns and villages for the holiday. The scale is genuinely difficult to comprehend. Chinese transport infrastructure — rail, road and air — operates at maximum capacity for several weeks, and securing train tickets for the most popular routes requires booking weeks in advance through a competitive online system. For the many migrant workers who have spent the year in cities far from their home provinces, Spring Festival represents the primary or only occasion on which they see their families, making the journey non-negotiable regardless of cost or difficulty.

The evening before the first day of the festival, known as New Year's Eve or Chúxī (除夕), is the emotional and ritual centre of the entire holiday. Families gather for a reunion dinner, known as tuányuán fàn (团圆饭), which is the most important meal of the Chinese year. The dishes served at the reunion dinner vary by region but are almost universally chosen for their symbolic associations. Fish is served whole, because the word for fish (yú, 鱼) is a homophone of the word for surplus or abundance. Dumplings, particularly in northern China, are eaten because their shape resembles ancient gold ingots. Glutinous rice cake (nián gāo) is consumed because its name contains the word for year (nián) and a homophone of the word for tall or high (gāo), suggesting growth and improvement in the coming year. After dinner, families traditionally stay awake to see in the new year, a practice known as shǒusuì (守岁), and fireworks are set off at midnight on a scale that in most Chinese cities produces noise and smoke of remarkable intensity.

Now, the first day of the new year is devoted to visiting immediate family, particularly parents and grandparents. Younger family members bow or pay respects to elders, who in return give hóngbāo (红包) — red envelopes containing cash gifts. The red colour is chosen for its traditional association with good fortune and its supposed capacity to ward off evil. The amounts given in red envelopes follow social norms that vary by region, family wealth and relationship. Giving too little causes loss of face. 

The festival concludes on the fifteenth day with Yuánxiāo Jié (元宵节), the Lantern Festival. On this evening, which coincides with the first full moon of the lunar new year, lanterns are displayed publicly and privately, lantern riddle competitions are held, and yuanxiao or tangyuan — glutinous rice balls filled with sweet or savoury stuffings and served in broth — are eaten. 

The holiday has changed considerably as China has urbanised. In cities, the departure of migrant workers for their home provinces creates an unusual quiet in normally dense urban environments during the festival week, with restaurants closed, streets emptied and the normal pace of commercial life suspended. For the urban middle class, Spring Festival has increasingly become an occasion for international or domestic tourism rather than family reunion, as rising incomes have made travel a feasible alternative to the traditional home visit. 

Teaching institutions like GoEast Mandarin in Shanghai have students who spend Spring Festival in China consistently describe it as the single most culturally intensive experience of their time in the country.