Hello and welcome to the special Chinese new year's edition of discovering China.I'm Alina Wang and I'm Ben Hedges,and today we'll be taking you through some of the most important traditions of Chinese new year and historical background.We will look at some of the legends behind Chinese new year and how to celebrate it.Here in the US and Chinese across the world.The Chinese have specific way to celebrate their new year.If you walk down the street in Chinatown during Chinese New Year,you see a variety of ancient traditions such as red banners, firecrackers and lion dance performances, streets are filled with lively celebration.However, legend has said that the new year has not always been a time of festivity.An Asian Chinese story told a chilly start to this festive holiday, it begins with an ancient Chinese beast called Nian.Every New Year Nian would rise from swelling in the sea to ravage Chinese village in livestock and hurting people.The villages soon found out from a wise gray-haired old manthat the only way to scare the beast away was to set off firecrackers and light lamps and to hang red banners on each door.As the story goes, this was the beginning of a tradition that would last thousands of years.So this story leads to the creation of many of other traditions for celebrating Chinese New Year, let's take a look at some of these traditions.We're gonna try now tells us why firecrackers are so important to kick off the new year celebrations.For many Chinese, New Year celebrations will not be the same without firecrackers.
