Stocking up on Spring Festival provisions

Preparations for Spring Festival include stocking up on necessary provisions.At noon on New Year，’s Eve day shopkeepers everywhere put up their shutters and lock their doors，not to reopen until the end of Spring Festival several weeks later.Therefore，everything needed to make offerings to the ancestors，entertain guests，and feed he family over the long holiday must be purchased in advance.Before setting out to the market，a Spring Festival shopping list must be made，including items such as meat，poultry，and eggs；fruit and vegetables；rice and flour；cigarettes，alcohol，sugar，and tea；red paper，images of celestial horses and the Kitchen God，incense and candles，snacks，new calendars，and toys.Also not to be forgotten are new clothes for the children and firecrackers to welcome in the New year .

After the Spring Festival provisions have been brought home，it’s time to make further preparations for theholiday.These may include slaughtering pigs，packing blood sausage，making tofu，steaming New Year’s stick rice cakes，and making fry bread.This must all be done in advance，since no cooking may be done from New Year’s Eve until well into the first month of the new year.As a result，starting at Little New Year，families everywhere are caught up in preparations for the New Year’s holiday A saying popular in Beijing vividly expresses the holiday spirit of China’s Spring Festival：Eat sticky candy on the twenty-third；sweep clean the house on the twenty-fourth；fry up tofu on the twenty-fifth；stew some mutton on the twenty-sixth；kill the rooster on the twenty-seventh；set dough to rise on the twenty-eighth；steam mantou buns on the twenty-ninth stay up all night on New Year’s Eve；pay holiday visits on New Year’s Day.

Making papercuts

Many traditions are associated with Little New Year. In addition to honoring the Kitchen God, these include stocking up on Spring Festival provisions, cleaning house for the New Year, and making New Year’s decorations among the most popular decorations are papercuts to decorate doors and windows papercuts usually depict auspicious designs of animals, people, flowers, and fruit To make a papercut, a pair of scissors or a cutting blade and several different colors of paper are assembled Before starting to cut, it is necessary to have a design. This can be done by drawing a design directly on the paper, or by laying an old papercut over the new paper and using it as a guide. When using a scissors, it is best to first cut from the outside in, and then from the inside out. Papercutting puts great emphasis on cutting various types of lines. Folk artists divide the different types of cuts into five categories Round like the full moon

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