新年快乐 Xin Nian Kuai Le!
Chinese New Year is upon us once more. If this is your first encounter with the festival, you’re in for a treat.
Singapore puts up a wonderful display of festivities that everyone in the city, regardless of ethnicity, country of origin, or religion, can participate in and enjoy.
For a whole month leading up to the actual celebration, the entire country is abuzz with joyous strains of festive music. Streets and buildings are decked out in prosperous colours of red and gold. Supermarkets and stores are stocked with all kinds of delicious foods and snacks commonly eaten during the festivities.
Grab your reddest and brightest outfit and let’s get going!
Chinese New Year is, as its name suggests, the festival that celebrates the start of the new year according to the Chinese lunisolar calendar —a calendar that incorporates both the lunar and solar calendars, which are dependent on the phases of the moon, as well as the position of the sun in the earth’s sky.
It's a fifteen-day festival celebrated by Chinese people worldwide to mark the end of winter and the arrival of spring, with plenty of rituals and traditions—all of which are steeped in centuries of myth and folklore.
One of the most popular legends centres around how a group of brave and clever villagers managed to chase away a trouble-making creature known as Nian, by making lots of noises with drums and displaying red spring scrolls on the doors and windows of all the houses in the village. These customs are still practised to this day, as part of the Chinese New Year celebrations.
It is not only the Chinese who celebrate this festival. A few other countries that follow the same lunisolar calendar also have their own versions of this festival, celebrated on the same days as Chinese New Year. The Koreans have the Korean New Year known as Seollal. The Vietnamese have the Tết Nguyên Đán festival. New Year is known as Shōgatsu for the Japanese—which once followed the same lunisolar calendar but has been changed to follow the Gregorian calendar since 1873.
Some other names for the festival include Spring Festival and Lunar New Year.
With a large proportion of Singapore’s population celebrating Chinese New Year, it’s little wonder that the festival is a big thing across the country.
The first two days of the festival are gazetted public holidays in Singapore, with visiting and the merriment continuing throughout the 15 days of the festival.
Many of the rituals adopted by the Chinese in Singapore in preparation for Chinese New Year and during the festival itself are passed down from the older generations, originating from their hometowns in China.
Many time-honoured customs like spring cleaning, buying new clothes, gathering for reunion dinner, tossing a lohei, visiting the homes of friends and family with a pair of mandarin oranges in hand, and watching lion dances are still practised today.
However, many younger people are putting a modern twist on some time-cherished traditions, like giving out e-hongbao instead of physical red packets and ordering food for their reunion dinner feasts, instead of spending the whole day in the kitchen cooking multiple dishes for the entire family.
Non-Chinese people also celebrate Chinese New Year in Singapore, in the true spirit of multiculturalism. In fact, some aspects of the celebrations in Singapore are influenced by our multicultural society—like the inclusion of some Malay snacks, such as kueh bankit and kueh bahulu among Chinese New Year staples in many households, as well as the participation of people from all ethnicities in the annual Chingay parade that celebrates Chinese New Year.
Since the festival follows the lunisolar calendar, dates are different every year. The first day of the Chinese New Year typically happens on the rising of the new moon between 21 January and 20 February.
In 2025, Chinese New Year begins on Wednesday, 29 January, and ends on Wednesday, 12 February.
Like in China, Chinese New Year in Singapore is a 15-day affair stretching across two weekends, making it perfect to squeeze in as much visiting as possible. However, only the first two days of the festival are public holidays in Singapore.
As modern and cosmopolitan Singapore is, Singaporeans still follow many traditional Chinese New Year rituals and customs —yes, even the younger generations.
Learn about these traditions and partake in them where possible, to really get in the spirit of the festivities!
The Chinese believe that the New Year must be ushered in with a clean home, to wash off all the bad luck from the previous year, and start the new year on a clean and positive slate.
Many households do a thorough cleaning in the weeks leading up to the new year, ensuring that the home is spick and span to welcome all the good luck for the new year. Some people even go to great lengths to put on a new coat of paint for the walls and make all repairs to broken things to make their homes as pristine as possible.
The home is also usually decorated with paper decorations with auspicious phrases like 恭喜发财 (Gong Xi Fa Cai), 万事如意 (Wan Shi Ru Yi), and 年年有余 (Nian Nian You Yu), to usher in prosperity, peace, and fortune to the homes. Golden pineapples, paper firecrackers, lanterns, flowers, gold ingots, red paper fans, potted kumquats, and the giant inverted 福 (Fu) which means “fortune"—all symbols of prosperity, good fortune, and wealth—are also commonly used to decorate homes for the Chinese New Year.
In households with a Buddhist or Taoist altar, the altar and all the statues on it are cleaned thoroughly, and the decorations put up for the previous New Year are taken down and burnt, before new decorations are put up to welcome the new year.
It is a big ‘no’ to sweep, mop, or do any form of cleaning on the first day of Chinese New Year—to avoid sweeping away any of the newly arrived luck. Some families even keep all brooms and dustpans away, to make doubly sure that there’s no possibility of inadvertently cleaning away the good fortune of the new year!
In the past, getting new clothes for the new year was a social ritual. Everyone in the village was expected to be dressed in fresh clothes and be well-presented for the festivities. Symbolically, new clothes also signify fresh beginnings.
The practice of ‘donning new garments’ is believed to ward away evil spirits and invite good fortune and prosperity.
Many Chinese who celebrate Chinese New Year in Singapore still practise this custom of dressing in new clothes for the new year. Additionally, new clothes should be in auspicious colours like red, gold, and orange, and decorated with auspicious motifs like dragons, pineapples, or flowers.
For an element of fun, some families with younger children in Singapore also enjoy putting on matching outfits every Chinese New Year. This also makes for nice family portraits often taken every new year. And new pyjamas worn to sleep on the night of Chinese New Year’s Eve also ensure you wake up to good luck on the very first day of the new year!
While the Chinese New Year public holiday technically falls on the first and second day of Chinese New Year, you’ll realise that many employers in Singapore let their employees go home early, in the afternoon of Chinese New Year’s Eve (the day before Chinese New Year).
That’s because everyone who celebrates Chinese New Year in Singapore kicks off the festivities with a reunion dinner (known as 团圆饭 or Tuan Yuan Fan) with their families on the Eve of Chinese New Year.
Some families cook a feast for this dinner, including traditional dishes like braised duck, stewed abalone with spinach, whole fish, roasted meats, and soup. Some others have their reunion dinners at restaurants, with the more popular joints needing to be booked months in advance, due to the huge demand during the festive season.
Back in olden times in China, when people moved out of their family homes as they grew up, into other villages or cities, the Chinese New Year’s Eve reunion dinner was an important occasion for everyone in the family to get together and reconnect.
Today, the reunion dinner is a reminder of familial ties and love within the family, which is at the heart of the Chinese New Year.
The practice of tossing a Chinese salad of ingredients while calling out prosperous Chinese phrases is known as lohei (the Cantonese word for 捞起 Lao Qi, which means to toss up)—and is a much-loved element of Chinese New Year festivities in Singapore.
The salad is made up of several layers of thinly sliced raw fish, shredded vegetables, peeled pomelo, candied ginger, crackers, honey, sour plum sauce, and pepper, with each ingredient having its own symbolism (for example, the fish symbolises wealth, crackers symbolise gold, honey symbolise sweetness in life). Each ingredient is typically added with an accompanying auspicious phrase, like “May the year ahead be a peaceful and prosperous one!”
When all the ingredients are finally in, everyone present tosses everything together with chopsticks while exchanging blessings and good wishes.
Things can get pretty rowdy and messy at this fun custom, especially when kids are present because the belief is that the higher the toss, the more blessings will come to you in the year ahead!
Many people visit their parents’ and grandparents’ homes on the first day of the Chinese New Year, to pay their respects.
In exchange, the elders will give their blessings to children giving them red packets known as hongbao, filled with money. Only unmarried children may receive these hongbao—married children are expected to give out hongbao to younger family members as well.
A pair of mandarin oranges are always brought along when visiting homes, and presented to the head of the household, greeting them with prosperous phrases. In exchange, you will receive a pair of oranges back—meant for you to take home with you. These oranges represent blessings and well-wishes, exchanged between you and the host.
If you’re invited to your friend’s house this Chinese New Year, remember to bring a pair of oranges, put on some brightly coloured clothes, and wish your hosts a very happy New Year!
For the Chinese who practice Buddhism or Taoism, it is customary to pay respects to their ancestors on occasions like Chinese New Year, as a mark of respect and an act of filial piety.
This is typically done on Chinese New Year’s Eve, just before the reunion dinner—to invite their ancestors to join the family at the celebrations. Food, flowers, drinks, and other offerings are laid out at the altar, and sometimes joss sticks are burnt too.
The more devout and superstitious folk will also prepare to welcome the God of Wealth during Chinese New Year, by offering joss sticks at home or visiting a temple. Another deity often worshipped during the festival is the Jade Emperor, whose birthday is said to fall sometime during the 15-day celebrations. Devotees who prepare offerings and joss sticks may pray to him to give well wishes for the upcoming year.
The sight of brightly coloured “lions”, comprising a troupe of pugilistic performers prancing around energetically during the Chinese New Year as part of the celebrations, is a beloved sight in Singapore.
The “lion” is helmed by minimally two people, with one person controlling the head and another controlling the tail. The rest of the troupe plays the drums for the lions to dance to.
The dance that the lions perform re-enacts the ancient legend of the fearsome Nian creature being chased away by quick-witted villagers, who donned costumes of straw and cloth, clanging pots and pans loudly. It usually includes the lion chewing up some vegetables or fruits, as Nian did when it ate up all of the villagers’ crops and stores; and the revealing of some auspicious numbers.
Today, the lion dance is a symbol of good luck, prosperity, and protection from harm.
Not every family has the space to accommodate a lion dance in their homes, but many malls do have lion dances as part of the Chinese New Year celebrations!
One of the best things about Chinese New Year has to be the vast array of delectable goodies you get to sample when you go visiting.
Almost every home that welcomes visitors during the new year will be stocked with delicious snacks and sweet drinks, to symbolically welcome sweetness in the upcoming year.
The variety of Chinese New Year snack options in Singapore is special because of our multiculturalism. Some Malay or Eurasian snacks have become staples in many Chinese households as part of the celebrations—while others have taken on a completely local twist.
Some snacks you absolutely must try when you’re here in Singapore are:
With local pineapple jam and European-influenced short-crust crumbly pastry, these golden-yellow tarts are a wonderful blend of Eastern and Western influences. You can enjoy them as open-faced tarts with a dollop of jam atop the buttery pastry, or with the jam ensconced in the pastry, like a ball. Eating more of these tarts is believed to welcome good fortune and wealth, as the Hokkien word for pineapple, ong lai, sounds the same as “fortune has arrived” in Hokkien and Cantonese.
Crispy and delicate, these egg rolls are really delicious, especially those with a slight hint of coconut and pandan. They’re often rolled into cylinders, or folded into fan shapes and stamped with a pattern. These rolls are meant to represent love and affection.
Notoriously difficult to stop eating, these tiny rolls are tiny but mighty in flavour! Spicy and savoury dried shrimp paste is rolled into a wanton wrapper, folded tightly into a neat little cylinder-shaped package, and deep-fried to crispy perfection.
This unique white-coloured Peranakan flower-shaped cookie, made from tapioca flour and coconut milk, simply melts in your mouth, leaving you wanting more. It’s just the right amount of sweet and fragrant and represents purity and new beginnings for the new year.
This popular spongy shell-shaped cake treat that the Malays traditionally enjoy, is now well-loved by the Chinese during the Chinese New Year. With its delicious crunchy on the outside, soft and airy on the inside texture and eggy aroma, it is little wonder that people of all ages love this snack. Think of this as an Asian madeleine—it’s made of similar ingredients and has a pretty similar texture to the traditional French treat.
Buttery, crumby, and topped off with a single roasted cashew—these adorable golden cashew cookies are really addictive. Everything about it means “wealth”, from its prosperous golden colour to the ingot-shaped cashew representing gold—so eat up!
If you’ve had beef jerky before, you’ll be familiar with this. Bak kwa—thinly sliced meat (usually pork) barbecued to smoky perfection with a glossy, caramelised surface—is a very popular Chinese New Year snack. The most popular stalls often have long pre-order lists months before the festival begins or snaking queues at the stalls in the days before the festival. Its deep red colour makes it a really lucky snack to enjoy.
Just as several legends claim to explain the origins of this snack (to fend off the Nian or to placate the Kitchen God), there are also different ways to enjoy this snack—either deep fried with pieces of yam, or steamed. Made from glutinous rice flour and sugar, this is a sticky, chewy snack included by many families in their plethora of Chinese New Year goodies. It’s eaten as a symbol of achievement and as a hope of attaining greater heights because it also means “higher year” in Mandarin.
Experiencing Chinese New Year in Singapore is a really wonderful experience. It’s so big in Singapore, perhaps even bigger than Christmas, that literally every shop in every mall, and almost all public spaces, will be decked out in full Chinese New Year glory every year. Think of decorations in vibrant and auspicious colours of red, gold, pink, and orange; flowers to represent spring; pineapples; lanterns; lights; and the year’s animal zodiac proudly on display.
(It’s the Year of the Snake this year in 2025, so be prepared to see snake motifs and snake-themed decorations everywhere you go this Chinese New Year!)
If you’d like to decorate your home in the spirit of the new year, it’s really easy to get your hands on some decorations. Supermarkets all over the city and shops in neighbourhood town centres are very well-stocked with Chinese New Year decorations of all kinds. Whether you’re looking for paper decorations, auspicious phrases, lanterns, lights, hanging pineapples, gold ingots, and snake-themed decorations—all you have to do is walk out of your home, head to the nearest mall or your nearest town centre, and shop for what you think your house needs to welcome the new year.
You could start by pasting a paper out and hanging a pair of pineapples on your front door, pasting some lucky phrases on the walls of your home, and placing some flowers, mandarin oranges and gold ingot decorations on your table.
In the lead-up to Chinese New Year, there’s so much to do and see around Singapore—you’ll be absolutely spoilt for choice. Malls are buzzing with activities, such as food bazaars selling all kinds of Chinese New Year goodies that you can sample, craft workshops for the little ones, and lion dances you can catch (lion dance chasing all across Singapore is actually a whole thing—you can peek at this schedule that has been compiled and head on down to any of the locations to see for yourself!)
Among all the dazzling decorations and celebrations, here are three of the brightest and most awe-inspiring locations you must visit this Chinese New Year here in Singapore:
If you haven’t yet visited Chinatown, this Chinese New Year is the perfect time to step into this historic and atmospheric district that preserves and proudly showcases Singapore’s Chinese heritage.
From now till 27 February, take in the beautiful lanterns and light-up zodiac displays with a snake-themed focus in anticipation of the beginning of the Year of the Snake at New Bridge Road, South Bridge Road, Upper Cross Street and Eu Tong Sen Street.
Wander around the breathtaking sea of lights and enjoy the festive market vibes while you’re at it – which includes lots of mouth-watering Chinese New Year snacks; stalls selling clothes, decorations, and other trinkets; live performances, and lion dances.
This iconic annual street parade is all about celebrating Chinese New Year in true Singaporean style, paying homage to both our multiculturalism and modernity. Since it began in 1973, the Chingay Parade has been a yearly extravaganza, involving thousands of performers who have put in hours of their time to practice, as well as dozens of giant floats, props and structures.
This year’s parade, which will be held on 7 and 8 February, promises to be an unforgettable one centred on culinary adventures and the theme of “Joy”. It features an awe-inspiring four-level stage, 4000 performers of all ethnicities, all coming together to celebrate Chinese New Year, and adorable food-inspired floats and displays.
Tickets are currently sold out, but you can still visit the Free Admission area to catch a glimpse of the vibrant performances.
A FREE giant lantern display along the river, accompanied by firecracker shows, a delicious food street, carnival games, and live performances to celebrate the Chinese New Year? Count us in. This annual extravaganza at the Gardens By The Bay is truly a sight to behold and a wonderful way to get in the spirit of the festivities.
This year, the display honours 60 years of Singapore’s independence, and includes nostalgic scenes from Singapore’s past, calling to mind the old Wonderland Amusement Park, and a majestic Merdaka lion centrepiece signifying our hard-won independence and freedom.
While there’s certainly a lot to see and do during Chinese New Year in Singapore, don’t forget that at the heart of it all, is the strengthening of familial ties and renewing of friendships—so those meals with family and friends are the most meaningful of them all. Happy year of the Snake!
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