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Winter 2015

Celebration

Colorful architecture of the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

In my hometown country, most of people go back to their family to celebrate Lunar New Year from all round the world. At the first day of Lunar New Year. Family have go to their family ancestral hall, if their family have members changing, for example, they have new baby, somebody married, or died. People have go to their family ancestral hall to update the members info.

People bring some money, the money should be put in red bag, some food, candles and the info of the changed members to ancestral hall, at the first day of Lunar New Year. People give the info and red bag to the patriarch of the family name, ask the patriarch to update his family members info. Put down the food, fire the candles, and knelt to ancestors.

In China, the ancestral hall members have the same family name, they think they are in one family from long long ago, but not all the same family name in one ancestral hall. For example, Li is a very big family name in China, but there are many ancestral hall family name is Li. Some ancestral hall are very big and in long history. The ancestral hall members amount between several hundreds to several millions. Most of ancestral halls history more than several hundreds years old.