About

What this site is

Chinese Festivals is a small, independent guide to the fifteen main traditional festivals of the Chinese year, written for readers who did not grow up with them. Each guide answers the same questions: where the festival comes from, what it means, how the day unfolds, what people do, how it differs across China, what to say and what not to, how to prepare, and what to eat.

The dates are computed rather than copied. Each one is calculated from the lunar calendar and from the sun’s apparent longitude for 2026 through 2040, then cross-checked against a second independent lunar calendar and against published tables. Where sources disagree we say so. The taboos are written up as “what people believe and why”, because that is what a visitor actually needs to know.

Customs vary enormously by region and by family, and this site does not pretend otherwise. It describes mainstream practice and flags the places where it diverges. When in doubt, ask an elder — that advice works in real life as well as on this page.

Who publishes it

This site is published by Kredlab, and that is a statement about who is answerable for it. If a date is wrong, or a custom is described badly, the fault is the publisher’s and the correction is the publisher’s to make.

There is no advertising here, no sponsorship and no paid placement. Nothing on this site is written in order to sell anything, and no outside party has any say over what it says. The guides are maintained by hand.

How the dates are worked out

Most of these festivals are lunisolar: the months begin on the new moon, and the year is kept in step with the seasons by inserting a leap month every two or three years. A few — Qingming and the Winter Solstice among them — are solar terms, fixed by the sun’s apparent longitude rather than by the moon, which is why they barely move from year to year.

Every date on this site is calculated for 2026 to 2040 rather than copied from a list. Each result is then checked a second time against an independent lunar calendar and against published tables, and the three are compared. Where they disagree, the date is re-derived and the page says what the published table has instead.

You can read the whole result, festival by festival and year by year, on the Chinese festival date tables.

One caveat, and it matters: a computed date is not an official announcement. If a date is load-bearing for you — a flight, a wedding, a booking, an event — confirm it with an official source before relying on it.

Where the descriptions come from

The guides are written in English for this site. They are not translated, and they are not assembled from other sites. They describe mainstream practice: what is generally recorded, and what people actually do. Where a custom differs by region or by family, the guide says which version it is describing rather than averaging the two into something that is true nowhere.

The taboos are a case in point. They are presented as what people believe and the reason behind the belief, never as rules you are being told to follow.

The illustrations were made for this site and are decorative rather than documentary — they are not photographs of any real observance, and they are not a record of how anyone dresses or decorates. How the material may be reused is set out in the terms.

Corrections

Errata are genuinely welcome; they are the reason the contact page exists. The most useful correction is a specific one: which page, which line, what it says, what it should say, and a source if you have one — an official calendar or a published almanac is the most helpful thing you can send.

When something here is wrong, the fix goes on the page and the revision date below changes. It does not go into a footnote.

Write to esp32.go@gmail.com.

Content last reviewed 7 October 2026.