Today is the last festival during Chinese New Year holiday: Lantern Festival. Usually after this day, Chinese people would say the whole New Year holiday are ended officially. Then many factories start to work and gradually get back to normal production, school kids prepare to back to school. For international importers to do business with China, they may often ask supplier to fill the CNY holiday close and open date form in advance, usually one or two months before CNY holiday start, to better plan for orders to ship before or after CNY. Here we would share 5 important things need know about Chinese New Year Holiday for international buyers and importers, or anybody who are interested in it.
1, The Chinese New Year or Spring Festival is calculated and based on Chinese Lunar calendar.
That’s why many foreigners may wonder why it vary each year for solar calendar. This is quite different and would confuse many people and they have to check the CNY holiday date each year with their Chinese suppliers. Please don’t worry about it, we will check the date in advance and remind of you on SNS like LinkedIn or Facebook.
2, When the Chinese New Year holiday officially begins?
Lunar date Dec 23rd kicks off CNY holiday. Most factories and companies would close before this day, we call Little Year. Little is compared with big, which is the official New Year’s Eve, it’s like reminding people to prepare for the big CNY holiday. We do many activities on this day, including house cleaning, to sweep away bad luck and pray to the stove god.
However in the traditional sense, it’s Laba Festival, which is lunar date Dec 8th, marks the beginning of the Spring Festival. On this day, memorial ceremonies are held to pray to ancestors and gods. We cook and eat Laba porridge in this festival. People’s hearts become tempted and excited to prepare for CNY holiday, especially for people who works far away outside their hometown. When I just graduated and came to work in Hangzhou, while my parents were still in hometown, my mum told me, since day one of lunar date December, she would be excited and expecting for me back to hometown for Spring Festival….
While in recent modern times, people all are busy on work, the government’s official CNY holiday only starts from Chinese New Year’s Eve and last only one week about 7 days. But only government and financial institutions and a few big companies like Alibaba, Tencent etc obey it.
3, When the Chinese New Year holiday officially end?
Lunar date Jan 15th officially end Spring Festival holiday, which is Lantern Festival. You would see many red lanterns hung on the streets and many activities including Lion dance, Dragon dance and Lantern riddles. We eat Tang Yuan this day, which represent family reunion, because tang yuan sounds similar to “reunion” in Chinese. After this day, people finally made their decision to back to work, no more other excuse to postpone, haha…. Especially for manufactories, as many of their workers come from far-away provinces, they tend to go back factory only after Lantern Festival, so we can say, China’s normal production only gradually back to normal after Lunar date Jan 15th the Lantern Festival.
While for many other non-manufacturing companies, we gradually start to work on Lunar date Jan 8th, or 10th, or 12th, it depends.
4, The importance of CNY holiday for Chinese people.
Chinese New Year Holiday is the longest holiday for Chinese people, it’s a reunion festival for all families. We may feel quite sad if can’t stay with family during the holiday. Most Chinese people are homesick, the CNY holiday make it the worst homesick period for us. We take the holiday to visit relatives and hometown classmates or friends, this might be the only chance per year for people working far-away from home. We cherish the CNY holiday very much, many factory workers would exchange ordinary’s holiday to prolong the CNY holiday, to make it around one month long. So, you can’t hope nor push workers to get back earlier, it doesn’t work.
5, How to plan the orders to avoid CNY holiday’s impact on normal production or shipment?
Usually many manufactories’ holiday start earlier and end later, about one month’s blank for production. If importers expect to ship before CNY, it’s much easier, it’s only subject to the supplier’s holiday schedule. But you have to take freight forwarders or shipping companies into consideration, as usually it become difficult or at least more expensive to get container driver since lunar calendar date Dec 23th the Little Year, it’s same reasons: most container drivers are far away from their hometown and back to home quite earlier too than our Government’s official holiday set. If shipment immediately from CNY holiday, it’s better to spare 1.5 to 2 months earlier than the normal delivery terms, as the raw materials manufactories may affect, factory need to prepare the raw materials in advance and get raw materials in stock before CNY holiday, or production and shipment on time can’t be guaranteed.
We mainly talked the 5 things need to know about Chinese New Year holiday for international business, which importers and buyers care more about it. 2022 is China’s tiger year, Conric team wish you luck and fullness of vigor and vitality in the whole year of Tiger!