Spring has arrived

Dear readers,

This is the second Spring Festival that we have welcomed since we launched the magazine you are holding in your hands three years ago. We marked the last Spring Festival, or the Chinese New Year in the sign of the Ox, with a cover and an appropriate text about the main characteristics of this holiday. This time, we decided to dedicate the entire issue to the Spring Festival and the Year of the Rabbit. There are several reasons for such an approach.

First of all, the Spring Festival is the most important holiday in Chinese history, which has been celebrated for thousands of years. As such, it speaks a lot about past times, traditions and customs as they were valid in Chinese civilization, the relationship within family and community. The Chinese New Year plastically shows the opulence and richness of Chinese culture and civilization.

Second, the importance of that festival cannot be overemphasized in modern Chinese life. Here we mean the phenomena that we cover in our special, such as the spring crowd or the Gala. These are modern phenomena that show the adaptability and change of Chinese tradition in accordance with the dynamics of modern life. The Spring Rush is a forty-day period before and during the Spring Festival, the world’s largest population migration. The dynamic modern life keeps hundreds of millions of Chinese away from their family home, and the Spring Festival is one of the rare opportunities to visit their hometown, parents or relatives. The Gala is a television program broadcast by CCTV since the early eighties on New Year’s Eve. The multi-hour program is a mixture of dance, song and entertainment, similar to what is shown on our televisions on the last night of December. The difference, of course, is in the numbers: the Chinese New Year program is the most watched in the world, and preparations continue throughout the year.

Third, given the obvious significance that the Spring Festival has for the Chinese, it is time in the meeting of cultures and civilizations to become familiar with its various features and functions in Chinese life. Friendship starts with getting to know each other, and fear comes from not understanding the cultures of others. If we don’t know others, how can we expect them to understand us?

Therefore, let’s wish each other, regardless of whether we are Chinese or not, a happy Chinese New Year or Spring Festival. May the Year of the Rabbit bring fruitful cooperation between China and Bosnia and Herzegovina!

Faruk Boric
editor-in-chief of “Voice of China”