Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, is the most important of all the Chinese festivals. In 2012 the festival begins on 23 January, as we enter the year of the Dragon.

On the night of the Chinese New Year's eve most families will enjoy the annual reunion dinner and gather around the television to watch the hours-long New Year's Galla Show on CCTV with acts such as drama, music, comedy and traditional opera.
Another of the many traditions related to the celebration of the Spring Festival is the colorful decorations of windows and doors with traditional red paper cuts and lines of poetry that express good fortune for the coming year. In the Chinese countryside setting off firecrackers is still an important custom but this custom has now been banned in most Chinese cities due to fire hazard.

Family reunion
For many Chinese, especially the large number of migrant workers, the Spring Festival is the only time of year when they get a chance to reunite with family members in their native areas. Thus, the Spring Festival is also a period with extreme pressure on all means of public transportation as hundreds of millions of people queue up to buy train tickets home.