Liu Chunshun and his wife have been spending hours shopping at a Wal-Mart store in Beijing. "The Spring Festival is coming so we have to buy lots of things for our parents, parents-in-law and other relatives. It might not cost too much, but surly the shopping is tiresome," Liu, 32, a sales manager in a software developing company told Beijing Review.

Though the Spring Festival is still more than a week away the country has already begun preparing to celebrate. Traditional red Chinese lanterns have been raised above city streets across the country and banners line the roads inviting shoppers to New Year sales.

The Spring Festival, also known as Chinese Lunar New Year which falls on February 18 this year, is the most important festival for the Chinese people. But in China's changing society, the event has turned into something less like a festival and more like an economic phenomenon. Economists call it a 'commercial trigger'-an event that causes a surge in spending.

Many Chinese confess that the Spring Festival has already become an economic and psychological burden for them. They are tired of the excessive number of advertisements for sales and promotions and the problem of deciding what to buy for whom. Drinking and eating during the festivities is another burden on consumers' pockets. And for health conscious Chinese who have spent the year keeping in shape the Spring Festival can seem like a burden on their belly too.

According to Guo Zhichun, a culture commentator at the Global Times, no country's New Year is parallel to the Spring Festival in China in terms of commercialization and materialism.

In Western countries friends and relatives exchange gifts on Christmas Day but their gifts are usually simple: a card, a book or some candies are enough. In China, gifts have become increasingly expensive, noted Guo.

"Even the greeting words are something too material," said Guo. The most popular greeting words Chinese people use during Spring Festival are "congratulations for getting rich" or "may you be prosperous," the wish for good health is a second choice.

Spring Festival is not alone. The other important traditional Chinese festivals such as the Lantern Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival seem to be losing their essence and turning into simple shopping events too.

Protection needed or not

Perhaps even more alarming than the commercialization of China's festivals is that people are becoming increasingly less familiar with their own traditions. According to a survey conducted by the Beijing Youth Daily, during the Spring Festival 49.9 percent of respondents said they set off firecrackers, while only 17.7 percent said they have a ceremony to worship their ancestors and a mere 16 percent said they put up Spring Festival couplets on the front gates of their houses (which are composed of two sentences which match each other in sound and sense to express cherished wishes). Many experts as well as ordinary people have begun to worry that China's traditional festivals and customs may wither away.

In the meantime, foreign festivals like Valentine's Day and Christmas Day are gaining in popularity, especially among China's youth, which again has caused worry about the future of Chinese traditions.

A couple of months ago a group of Ph.D students from several of China's biggest and best universities publicly released a letter calling for a Chinese boycott of Christmas-a holiday they see as representing waning interest in traditional Chinese culture-as well as other non-native cultural trends.

If the reaction of Chinese bloggers is anything to go by their stance has little support. "Look how Japan and Korea's worship of Western culture always surpasses ours, yet they've preserved traditional culture a hundred times better than we have," argued one Chinese netizen. "Taiwan and Hong Kong are more Westernized than us, yet they have preserved Chinese culture better than we have. They thought boycotting Occidental culture would let them keep their own culture? Nonsense."

Chen Jing, a professor of Chinese folk art at Nanjing University based in Jiangsu Province, has urged the government to lodge an application to list the Spring Festival on a register of the world's intangible cultural heritage in order to help protect Chinese traditions. Chen, an expert on Chinese traditional festivals, advised the government to start working to lodge the application as soon as possible to revive national consciousness of traditional holidays.

Chen said he regrets the fact that traditional Chinese cultural practices have declined due to neglect and the impact of Western cultures. He also blamed commercials published by profit-hungry businesses, saying they are not helping to protect China's own culture.

"Spring Festival customs vary from place to place in China. All of them deserve protection," he said.

The Chinese Government has already taken steps to protect traditional festivals. In June 2006 the State Council listed the Spring Festival in the first batch of intangible cultural heritage of the country. The list contains 518 items in 10 categories, including folk literature, folk music and dance, traditional opera, ballad singing, cross talks, acrobatics, folk fine arts, traditional handicraft, traditional medicine and folk-custom.

According to Tian Qing, Director of the Intangible Culture Heritage Research Center, the intangible cultural heritage in China is facing a rigorous challenge in its battle against urbanization and globalization.

But not everyone agrees with Chen Jing's proposal. Zhang Jingwei, a famed Chinese social critic, argued that to lock the Spring Festival in the heritage safe box offers nothing but a false sense of psychological security.

"Traditional Chinese festivals such as the Spring Festival are open to social changes in their nature," Zhang said.

"Festivals are losing something which is inevitably to be lost because it doesn't fit into modern society any more. But in the meantime these festivals have evolved and developed something new such as the Spring Festival evening party and Spring Festival travel. This is just a natural evolving course."

Traditions of Chinese Lunar New Year

The celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year may last only a few days including New Year's Eve, but the New Year season actually starts from the 15th of the last month of the old year and ends on the 15th of the first month of the new year.

The New Year's Eve is very carefully observed. Supper is a feast, with all members of the family coming together. One of the most popular courses is dumplings boiled in water. After dinner Chinese families traditionally sit up for the night having fun, playing cards or mahjong and watching television programs dedicated to the occasion. It is also customary to visit a flower market and to keep lights on at home for the whole night. The zenith of the festivities comes at midnight when fireworks light up the sky and the sound of firecrackers fills the night.

Early the next morning, children greet their parents and receive some money as a gift in red wrapping. After this families traditionally go from door to door first greeting relatives and then neighbors. It is a time for reconciliation when old grudges should be cast aside and the air is permeated with warmth and friendship.

During and several days following New Year's Day people visit each other and exchange gifts. The New Year atmosphere is brought to a close fifteen days later when the Festival of Lanterns begins. As the name suggests, festival sees more lanterns hung, and there is folk dancing across China. The boiled dumplings of New Year give way to tangyuan, which is made with rice rolled into balls and stuffed with sweet or spicy fillings.