Chinese New Year: The Way of the Rabbit

While 2023 has already started for us, the fireworks light up the sky for those who celebrate Chinese New Year. Based on this year’s lunar calendar, the New Year celebration starts on the 22nd of January, and based on the zodiac signs 2023 is the year of the rabbit. In some records handed down from ancient times, there are incidents where rabbits were used as sacrifices.The twelve zodiac signs are the twelve earthly branches that match the year of a person’s birth. The origin of the zodiac is related to animal worship. According to the Qin bamboo slips unearthed in Hubei province a relatively complete zodiac system existed in the pre-Qin period. The earliest document handed down to record the twelve zodiac signs that are the same as modern ones is “Lunheng’’ written by Wang Chong of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The twelve zodiac signs are the vivid representatives of the twelve Earthly Branches, namely Zi (rat), Chou (ox), Yin (tiger), Mao (rabbit), Chen (Dragon), Si (snake), Wu (horse), Wei ( Sheep), Shen (monkey), You(chicken), Xu (dog), and Hai (pig), with the development of history, gradually merged into the folk belief concept of mutual generation and restraint, which is reflected in marriage, life, luck of the year, etc. However this year’s Chinese New Year is indeed a memorable one. Despite all the chaos that happened in 2022, such as the Russia-Ukraine war, Economic recession, and Energy Crisis. Those international conflicts and issues have deeply impacted the Chinese people. Especially international economic recession triggered the pop of the Chinese real estate bubble in 2022. Ever since the start of the COVID outbreak in early 2020, China has enacted extremely strict COVID control protocol. For example, patient quarantines, lockdowns, and COVID tests, those protocols worked extremely well during the early to middle stage of the outbreak. Those times the virus was not nearly as contagious as the Omicron variant eventually became. Under the extremely strict COVID restrictions, the original and Delta variants got under control very easily. Therefore, even though China has the largest population of any country in the world, it has a very low death and infection rate of the virus. However as of early 2022, the appearance of the Omicron variant forced the Chinese government to strengthen COVID policies even further, thus further burdening the Chinese people. These restrictions accompanied with global economic recession made the public extremely unsatisfied with the actions taken by the government. Yet because of those restrictions, Chinese New Year travel became extremely difficult for the Chinese people, due to the travel restrictions. Stats shown under COVID restrictions the amount of passengers was only 50 percent of what it was in pre-covid time. Chinese New Year celebration is really different under COVID restriction. For example the big family reunion is much more difficult to host due to the flight cancellations due to lockdowns and the COVID policies. Furthermore the big festivals are reduced in capacity and restaurants are banned to host large group Chinese New Year dinners.Finally as of November 2022 China lifted all of its COVID restrictions. Due to the new variant of COVID becoming less and less deadly and the internal economic stress that China is facing.

Domestic travel has finally returned to normal in China, in fact, data shows that during the Chinese New Year in 2019 (just before the COVID-19 outbreak),73 million passengers traveled domestically in China by air. Overall the lifted restriction means the travel traffic could be even higher than pre-COVID times. Due to the recovery of Chinese international and domestic tourism it seems promising to benefit the global economy. Furthermore with new relief policies on the real estate market, internet/tech giants, and desmostic/ international travel. The Chinese economy seems to be promising again in 2023 and beyond. Due to the recoveries in the Chinese internal society and its economy the Chinese people can once again celebrate Chinese New Year like pre-covid time. Without the concern about the restriction and the national economies.