China is a country with rich culture and distinctive customs. Due to the culture differences, some customs may be hard to understand to the outsiders. Our foreign readers share their thoughts. You're welcome to add yours.
1. Always eating a different food in every single holiday. Even minor holidays have their own special food.
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A foreigner shows the handmade "Zong Zi", a kind of glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves, in Meiling Township of Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, June 18, 2012 |
2. Giving hongbao, or red packets with money inside, to family members younger than you. This is if you are of working age. Otherwise you receive the hongbao from others.
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Parents are under pressure to give more lucky money to their children during Spring Festival, and face the challenge of teaching them about fi nancial management |
3. Putting up pictures of their deceased loved and bowing to them. Also placing bowls of food in front of them so they have stuff to eat in the afterlife.
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Some fruits are put in front of the portrait of 16-year-old Ren Wei who died when trying to rescue a boy trapped in a ice hole on Feb 18, 2013. |
4. When you clink glasses with someone, you need to make sure the point of contact is such that the rim of your glass is lower than the rim of the other person's glass. This is to show respect and deference.
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Citizens and tourists drink beer during the 16th China International Beer Festival in Dalian, northeast China's Liaoning Province, July 24, 2014. |
5. Burning the paper money. The burning of money and gifts takes place everywhere, especially on tomb-sweeping day (qingming festival) and on the anniversary of a loved one's passing.
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Chinese burn paper money to honor departed family members as a rare blue moon rises over Beijing on August 21, 2013. Chinese often burn 'gifts', such as paper houses, cars and money, to honor the dead and help them in the afterlife. |
6. Playing pranks at weddings. The groom's friends come up with "challenges" for newlyweds to perform, nothing actually pornographic, but often pretty risqué.
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Newlyweds at a frontier defense regiment in Hami prefecture of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region are goaded into biting the same apple so they kiss - one of the tasks they have to do at their wedding on Jan 28, 2014. |
