New Year’s Eve
The last day of the year. The old gazetteer splits the New Year into two entries, and this is the first: on this day the ancestors are offered to, the peach-wood charms are changed, a fire is set in the hall and the family sits round it to eat. The vegetarian offering, the bowing and the calls at other people’s doors belong to the next day.
1. Which day it is
The last day of the lunar year. The date follows the synodic month: if the twelfth month is a short one it is the twenty-ninth, if a long one the thirtieth, so people speak of “the twenty-ninth night” or “the thirtieth night”, and the Gregorian date changes every year.
Its place in the year is fixed by the moon alone and has nothing to do with solar terms; an intercalary month is added to some other month, and New Year’s Eve still falls on the last day of the twelfth. For the new moons, intercalary months and lunar phases of a given year, use the astronomical calendar.
2. The five things in the old gazetteer
The gazetteer records the day in a single sentence with five things strung together: offering to the ancestors, changing the peach-wood charms, setting a fire in the hall, sitting round it to eat (called wei lu, “round the stove”), and firecrackers, gongs and conch horns (called driving off evil and thieves).
- Offering to the ancestors: the ancestors are served first, the meal comes after. The offering precedes the eating; the order is not reversed.
- Changing the peach charms: new peach-wood charms on the door. “Change” means replace, not hang for the first time.
- A fire in the hall: a fire is set up in the main hall and the family sits around it. The fire is indoors, not in the courtyard.
- Wei lu: the gazetteer writes “sitting round it to eat” — eating with the fire at the centre. Today’s reunion dinner is still called wei lu.
- Firecrackers, gongs, conch horns: all three together; the gazetteer gives the purpose as driving off evil and thieves.
3. Where it ends and New Year’s Day begins
The gazetteer writes the two days separately: on New Year’s Eve the ancestors are offered to, the family sits round the fire, firecrackers go off; on New Year’s Day there is a vegetarian offering, the young and old bow to one another, and callers come to the door. On the first day people gather inward, on the second they move outward — the two days pull in opposite directions.
The line falls at midnight. Once the zi hour turns, it is the new year, and sitting up until then is called keeping the watch. The gazetteer does not record the watch separately; it simply sets the rites of the two days side by side.
4. What survives
Two of the five are still here: the reunion dinner and the offering to the ancestors, eaten at home with the ancestors served first. The separate fire in the hall has been folded into the meal itself — one table, one stove — with the same intent the gazetteer records: fire to gather the household’s breath, food to gather its people.
Firecrackers, gongs and conch horns sounding together are rarely heard now; the gazetteer sets them down together because that was the practice then.
5. Beyond the prefectural gazetteer
The old gazetteer covers the prefectural city and its neighbourhood only. What the constituent counties offer on this day, at what hour the table is laid, and what local rules apply, it does not record county by county. For the county-level picture see The ritual year: the same observance may fall on different days in Haiyang and Chaoyang, and take different offerings in Raoping and Huilai.
Sources
Gujin tushu jicheng, Chaozhou prefecture section, quoting the prefectural gazetteer (the customs chapter of the Qianlong Chaozhou fuzhi), accessed 18 October 2026. That wei lu and the offering to the ancestors are still kept is recorded on the same date in Spring Festival customs on this site.
See also: Spring Festival customs (the vegetarian offering, the bowing and the calls on New Year’s Day); The ritual year (the order of the year and the county-level picture); the eight festivals of the year and winter-festival balls (glossary entries); Astronomical calendar (new moons and intercalary months).
Home › Customs › The ritual year › New Year’s Eve
Text on this site is CC BY-SA 4.0; copyright in images is reserved and commercial use requires a separate licence.
Last revised: 3 November 2026