The decision by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to add the Spring Festival holiday to a list of humanity’s cultural heritage has sparked an outpouring of celebration in China.

The holiday joined the ranks of dozens of Chinese traditions to be inscribed into UNESCO’s prestigious Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list at a meeting held in Paraguay on Wednesday.

China had specifically applied for UNESCO to recognize the social practices of the Chinese people during the Spring Festival, though the holiday is also widely celebrated in many other Asian countries.

The UN organization reportedly decided to acknowledge the festival — also known as Chinese New Year — due to its diverse rituals and distinct cultural elements, which involve all sectors of Chinese society.

Rao Quan, China’s vice-minister of culture and tourism, welcomed the decision, emphasizing that Spring Festival is China’s most significant traditional holiday and a symbol of Chinese people’s aspirations for a better life and their deep connection to family and nation.

China now has 44 items included in UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage, more than any other country, with the inclusions ranging from Peking opera to traditional calligraphy and the Dragon Boat Festival.

The news has triggered a huge reaction on Chinese social media, with many netizens seeing UNESCO’s move as an official recognition of the Spring Festival’s Chinese origins.

In recent years, there has been an angry debate between China and several neighboring countries about whether the holiday should be known as “Chinese New Year” or “Lunar New Year.”

Many in China argue that “Lunar New Year” amounts to a form of cultural appropriation, obscuring the fact the tradition first emerged in ancient China.

Last year, the British Museum sparked fury on Chinese social media when it tweeted about a South Korean government-sponsored event that referred to “Korean Lunar New Year” celebrations.

A hashtag related to UNESCO’s decision to recognize the Spring Festival has already received more than 390 million views on the Chinese microblogging platform Weibo.

Some netizens reacted by suggesting that China should start referring to the Spring Festival in English as “Chunjie” — a transliteration of the Chinese word for the holiday.

The call mirrors a recent push in China to stop using the English word “dragon” as a translation for the Chinese word “long,” and instead use the term “loong,” as the Chinese mythical beast is very different from the fire-breathing Western version.

Domestic media responded with more generic expressions of patriotic pride, with one headline in the Party-run newspaper People’s Daily reading: “The Spring Festival is a sense of ritual ingrained in the DNA of the Chinese people."

The Spring Festival, marking the start of the new year in China’s traditional lunisolar calendar, has a history dating back more than 4,000 years.

It began as a religious festival in which people honored deities and ancestors, and prayed for good harvests in the coming year.

Today, it has evolved into a celebration of family values and social cohesion that China marks with a weeklong national holiday, with hundreds of millions of people traveling to their hometowns to reunite with their relatives.

For many Chinese households, the celebrations actually start with the worship of the Kitchen God several days before Chinese New Year’s Day and conclude with the Lantern Festival more than two weeks later.

The festival reaches its peak on the eve and first day of the Chinese New Year, when families dine together, exchange red envelopes filled with cash, and set off fireworks.

The festival also incorporates many forms of intangible cultural heritage, such as paper-cutting, dragon dances, and Lantern Festival events. It is also a crucial period for Chinese businesses, with families often using the holiday to go on vacation or see movies together.

Spring Festival is also widely celebrated around the world, with roughly one-fifth of the global population taking part in the festivities. That is particularly the case in countries that have strong cultural ties to China, such as Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, and Vietnam.

In recent years, China has attached strategic importance to preserving and promoting its traditional culture in a bid to boost its soft power and promote national self-confidence.

(Header image: Hao Yaxin/Xinhua)