Nian, the Chinese New Year Between Rituals, Symbols, and Everyday Life

Sometimes time does not flow forward - it returns. This is how Nian, the Chinese New Year, can be understood: not as a single celebration, but as a cycle unfolding over weeks of shared gestures, rituals, and symbols. From the Laba Festival to the Lantern Festival, Nian marks a collective passage, a moment when the past is released and the future imagined through the tangible signs of everyday life. For those unfamiliar with Chinese culture, Nian is above all a way of giving shape to hope. Written blessings, decorations, ritual objects, symbolic images, and traditional foods become tools for wishing harmony, prosperity, and well-being. These are simple, often domestic elements, yet deeply meaningful: auspicious motifs, zodiac animals, colors, and lucky phrases that transform the space and time of the celebration. The exhibition explores this universe through more than 150 objects from the collections of the Tsinghua University Art Museum, accompanied by a rich selection of images from folk culture. The exhibition weaves together historical artifacts and living traditions, bringing the museum into dialogue with the street, the ancient with the contemporary. At its core is the spirit of Nian: a culture that can be seen, touched, tasted, and shared - one that continues to renew itself as a bridge between memory and present life.