Imagine yourself as a child, waking up one morning with an odd feeling of excitement. Your mother, who just spent the past two days meticulously cleaning the house, has suddenly hidden all the brooms and mops and forbidden you from bathing. The table is piled with a week’s worth of food, prepared in advance solely for the purpose of living off of leftovers. Your father, who has just paid off all his old debts, greets you with an envelope stuffed with crisp dollar bills. Uttering an unkind word even to your worst enemy is strictly forbidden. And against the chaotic backdrop of deafening explosions, a blizzard of red paper, and wall posters of ghouls and monsters—you know you can be as loud and rambunctious as you want today, because your parents will refuse to spank you. No wonder you’re so excited: it’s Chinese New Year.
 
While champagne, midnight countdowns and showers of confetti characterize the turning of the year in the West, a paradoxical mix of superstition and jubilation mark its Chinese counterpart. New Year’s festivities, known as Chun Jie or “Spring Festival,” are a product of both reverence for centuries of tradition and a preoccupation with “expelling the old” to usher in the new. As multifaceted as China itself, the Chinese New Year is one holiday that might actually be all things to all people: playful and pious, indulgent and meditative, quaint, exotic and delicious.