Download or read book New Year Celebrations in Central China in Late Imperial Times written by Göran Aijmer and published by Chinese University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keenly attuned to the play of symbols, this anthropological study explores one of the major manifestations of Chinese popular tradition: the celebration of lunar the New Year. It analyzes a multitude of folk practices within a holistic perspective on Chinese traditional society, crafting a new picture of a world in which the social rhetoric of gender, lineage continuity, and ancestry were challenged by ritual manifestations of iconic symbolism. Viewed through the lens of Chinese imagery, the traditional calendar reveals new stories about the social organization of time as an expression of existential concerns in late imperial Chinese social life.