On December 4, the 19th ordinary session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO, which was being held in Asuncion, Paraguay, decided to include “the Spring Festival – the social practice of Chinese people in celebrating the traditional New Year” in the list of representative works of human intangible cultural heritage.
The successful application for World Heritage status during the Spring Festival is a high recognition of the cultural value of this ancient traditional festival in China by the world. As the most solemn traditional festival of the Chinese nation, the Spring Festival contains rich cultural connotations. It is a symbol of family reunion, a bond of family and friendship, and embodies the Chinese nation’s longing and pursuit for a better life.
The successful application for World Heritage status for the Spring Festival will make it not only a traditional Chinese festival in the future, but also a global festival. It will effectively promote the promotion of Chinese traditional culture, let more people in the world understand the unique charm of the Spring Festival, and let more people experience and enjoy customs such as pasting couplets, eating New Year’s Eve dinner, observing the New Year, and paying New Year’s greetings.
The successful application for World Heritage status during the Spring Festival will enhance the sense of identity and belonging of overseas Chinese towards traditional Chinese culture. At the same time, it will also build a solid bridge for cross-cultural exchanges between countries and China, making the Spring Festival a window for the world to understand China, and making this ancient cultural tradition shine even more brilliantly in the new era.
However, in the opinion of the editor, our successful application for World Heritage status during the Spring Festival also brought a very important consequence, which is that the possibility of South Korea and Vietnam stealing the Spring Festival has been reduced to zero.
Especially South Korea, in recent years, has stolen a lot of our traditional Chinese culture and applied for human intangible cultural heritage, such as Dragon Boat Festival, kimchi, dragon lanterns, etc. Even during the successful application for World Heritage status during the Spring Festival, South Korea also successfully applied for its soy sauce culture, which originated from its own country. Next year, it will also apply for World Heritage status for paper-making technology.
South Korea is still running wild on the road of stealing our traditional culture, and protecting Chinese traditional culture is a long and arduous task.
However, it is finally the most important Spring Festival for our Chinese nation, and it has been preserved.
The Spring Festival is not only the most important and oldest festival of the Chinese nation, but also the longest lasting traditional festival in human history. It originated in ancient times more than 4000 years ago and was formed thousands of years after the birth of Chinese civilization.
Specifically, the Spring Festival originated from the worship of gods and ancestors at the beginning and end of each year in ancient times. In ancient times, people held sacrificial activities at the beginning of the new year after the end of one year of farming, to repay the kindness of the gods and ancestors of heaven and earth, drive away evil and disasters, and pray for good luck and good luck.
But in recent years, South Korea, which is obsessed with stealing traditional Chinese culture, has extended its black hands to the Spring Festival, hoping to steal our Spring Festival and claim it as its own, turning it into the so-called ‘Korean Lunar New Year’.
Originally, South Korea, a semi colonial country of the United States that was only established after World War II, has been committed to eliminating the influence of Chinese culture and even banning the use of Chinese characters. However, later on, the South Korean government discovered that the ban on Chinese culture and the prohibition of Chinese characters had caused a rift between its cultural heritage and history, to the point where it could no longer understand previous books. So, the South Korean government was forced to slowly restore Chinese characters and culture.
However, the Koreans have resorted to deception in restoring the Chinese culture, turning the restoration into theft, which is organized, systematic and large-scale theft, and changing the stolen Chinese culture into “Korean culture”.
During the Spring Festival, South Korea did not even resume until 1999. After the recovery, South Korea immediately began stealing the Spring Festival operation. However, the stolen ones are not authentic. They turn Spring Festival couplets into white paper, red envelopes with lucky money into white packets, and turn celebration into a strong sense of mourning.
With the gradual increase of China’s international influence, coupled with the fact that overseas Chinese have always attached great importance to the traditional festival of Spring Festival, our Spring Festival has become increasingly international, and many countries have started to designate it as a statutory holiday.
For example, the United Nations has been issuing zodiac stamps with the theme of “Chinese Lunar New Year” before the Spring Festival since 2010, to celebrate the festival and convey the concept that “culture belongs to China and the world”.
South Korea, in order to steal our Spring Festival, created a concept called “Lunar New Year” to achieve the goal of “de Sinicizing” and “deconstructing Chinese civilization” during the Spring Festival. It can be said that the so-called ‘Lunar New Year’ is a cultural political operation and public opinion war.
However, since 2012, when Google, an American Internet company, searches for “Lunar New Year”, it will automatically display “Chinese New Year”, and information about Chinese Spring Festival will be provided at the top of the search results page and in the information box on the right.
This angered Koreans who dreamed of turning the “Chinese Lunar New Year” into the “Korean Lunar New Year”, so a Korean organization called “Friends of Korea” began to focus on sending protest emails and frantic harassment in February 2019, asking Google to modify relevant information, not to display “ChineseNewYear” or Chinese Spring Festival related information, that is, to complete the de sinicization of the Spring Festival at the international level.
The full name of “Friends of Korea” is “South Korean Internet Diplomatic Mission”, abbreviated as VANK, established in 1998. Although it claims to be a South Korean civil society organization, it actually receives funding from the South Korean government, especially the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. It is actually a subordinate organization of the South Korean government.
On January 20, 2021, “Friends of Korea” organized a large-scale group of people to post on the world’s largest petition website “Change.org”, accusing “China of stealing and distorting Korean culture” and turning stealing Chinese culture into robbing Chinese culture.
They claimed that it was wrong for China to distort the ancient Korean countries, Koguryo and the Bohai Sea, to belong to Chinese history, for the Chinese to distort the traditional Korean clothing, Hanbok, to be Chinese clothing, and for the Chinese to claim that the Taiji flag, the Korean flag, was created by China… Finally, they “appealed” to people all over the world to oppose China’s cultural hegemony, and demanded that China stop stealing Korean culture.
On January 27, 2021, Google in the United States finally met the requirements of the Koreans and separated the Spring Festival from China.
Subsequently, South Korea’s theft of the Spring Festival accelerated and began to launch propaganda around the world, claiming that the Spring Festival is the “Korean New Year” and actively lobbying other countries, especially Western countries such as the United States.
For example, on February 12, 2021, when President Joe Biden of the United States and the United Nations delivered a “New Year” speech during the Chinese Lunar New Year, they changed the previous “Chinese New Year” and chose to remove “Chinese”.
After delivering the Chinese New Year message, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau continued the tradition of only sending Chinese New Year messages and specifically sent a Korean New Year message.
In January 2023, the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism held a grand celebration of the so-called Korean Spring Festival at the British Museum in the UK. The official website of the British Museum also displayed posters featuring the Korean Lunar New Year.
The Korean government successfully stole the Chinese Spring Festival on international occasions and replaced it with the so-called “Korean Spring Festival”. Even British netizens cannot bear to see this and demand that the British Museum correct its mistakes.
The British side was forced to clarify specifically that the Spring Festival belongs to China!
And now that we have successfully applied for World Heritage status during the Spring Festival, it will be devastating for South Korea’s plan to steal the Spring Festival. South Korea will never have the opportunity or possibility to steal our Spring Festival and claim it as its own.
But unfortunately, we have been stolen a lot of traditional culture by Koreans.
For example, our Zigong colored lanterns.
On the tenth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea in 2002, the Ministry of Culture of China displayed the Zigong Lantern in Seoul and Busan, South Korea, and then the South Koreans watched the Zigong Lantern, sent people to study in Zigong, and then invited Zigong to help South Korea hold the Lantern Exhibition.
Then, after learning how to make lanterns, the Koreans held a Lantern Festival, and then turned around and successfully applied for the so-called “Lantern Festival” in December 2020, successfully stealing our Zigong Lantern as their own.
Our ancient costumes such as Tang and Hanfu were also stolen by South Korea.
In early November 2020, a Chinese cartoonist named “Old Xian” posted two “ancient style mixed illustrations” on social media that reflected Tang costumes and Hanfu. He was immediately attacked by the “Friends of Korea” army, accusing Chinese painters of plagiarizing Hanfu
In fact, not only our Tang and Han costumes, but also the clothes of the Ming Dynasty are regarded as “Korean costumes” by Koreans.
Do you think the so-called “Oriental style” that South Korea has been promoting in recent years is related to Japan? Wrong, it’s South Korea’s blatant theft of the Chinese style, just to create a ‘Oriental style’ for the purpose of de Sinicization.
Even more, Koreans have successfully changed the perception of many Chinese people, and regard the clothes of all Chinese dynasties except the Qing Dynasty as Korean costumes.
The way for Koreans to change the cognition of Chinese and Koreans is through “Korean dramas”. Funny and sad, Koreans believe that “the Qing Dynasty represents the whole Chinese history” through our TV dramas.
King costumes from the Ming Dynasty in Korean dramas
Chinese people do not recognize their traditional clothing, while Koreans think it is Korean tradition. What a terrible thing! However, the historical fact is that the Korean Peninsula regime has always completely imitated Chinese clothing, and even during the Ming Dynasty, the vassal states of the Korean Peninsula had to obtain the consent of the Ming Empire to wear Hanfu.
And in history, there was never such a thing as’ Hanbok ‘at all!
For example, our printing technology has also been successfully stolen by South Korea. South Korea uses the “earliest existing metal movable type book” to attempt to encroach on metal movable type printing, with the ultimate goal of monopolizing the entire invention patent of printing technology. At present, many printing museums in various countries mainly promote Korean printing techniques, and there are even no display cabinets from China.
Even the Koreans want to steal our Chinese characters, which were invented by the Koreans. In recent years, South Korea has focused on spreading rumors and creating hype on the Western dominated internet, releasing a large number of texts and videos promoting that Chinese characters are Korean.
If our Chinese characters are successfully stolen by the Koreans, then China will really become what the Koreans call “cultural thieves”.
Of course, the Korean government has stolen more than that from Chinese culture. Our traditional Chinese food hotpot has now become the traditional diet invented by Koreans. Our traditional musical instrument, the pipa, has also become the traditional musical instrument of South Korea. Our mythical beast, Xiezi, has also become the mythical beast of South Korea. Our story of the cowherd and the weaver girl has also changed to take place in South Korea. We, Confucius, the sage of Confucius, have also become Koreans. Our embroidery has also become Korean. Our fans have also become Korean. Our Taijiquan has also become Chinese after being invented by South Korea. The first king of our two “Five Emperors”, Yao and Shun, has also become Korean Even Zhang Sanfeng has become a Korean
The most ridiculous thing is that the Koreans have described our three eastern provinces as their “territory”, but they dare only steal Chinese culture, but they really dare not steal our territory.
So, why does South Korea go to such lengths and shamelessly steal traditional Chinese culture?
One is that in Korean history, as a branch of Chinese civilization and a vassal state of the Chinese Empire, there is a deep sense of inferiority in its bones. This manifestation of inferiority is arrogance, which means that although one does not have it, they always think of stealing the owner’s belongings to show their ‘strength’. At the same time, while making every effort to steal Chinese culture, they are also using the cultural industry and film and television entertainment in South Korea to crazily smear and spread rumors against China.
For example, Li Ziqi, the most influential video blogger in China, released a video of making kimchi on the oil pipe on January 9, 2021, which triggered Korean siege and cyber violence, accusing Li Ziqi of “stealing” kimchi from South Korea.
But China is the ancestral and original country of kimchi, and Korean kimchi is just a superficial learning from China, at most just a tiny branch of kimchi culture. Moreover, although South Korea currently claims to be the “king of kimchi”, in fact, up to 99% of its kimchi is imported from China.
The second reason is that in the information age, culture itself is a huge business, and a cultural tradition can be a commercial IP, representing huge wealth and national soft power. So stealing Chinese culture is beneficial for South Korea without any harm.
Returning to the topic of today’s article, regarding China’s Spring Festival, there are not only South Korea who want to steal it, but also Vietnam, and Vietnam is even more ruthless.
On February 1 (the first day of the Lunar New Year) when the Chinese Spring Festival is coming in 2022, the Vietnamese government released an article “The Origin and Significance of the Vietnamese Lunar New Year” on its official news website “The Government News Network of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam”, which directly changed the Spring Festival to originated in Vietnam.
The Vietnamese government claims that the Lunar New Year originated in Vietnam and existed before the period of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors of China. It was then brought to China by the Chinese and has been popular ever since.
Vietnam really fought to steal our Spring Festival, because during the “Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors” period of China, which was five thousand years ago, that was the prehistoric period. The land of China in that era was still the era of tribal alliances, the founding period of Chinese civilization, and the first country, Xia, had not yet appeared.
Did the Vietnamese Peninsula already have the Spring Festival during that era?
What a ridiculous feat!
Finally, with the successful application for World Heritage status during the Spring Festival, it is no longer possible for South Korea and Vietnam to steal it. How should we promote the Spring Festival culture around the world?
Tao Ge believes that what we need to do most is to immediately abandon the English name “Chinese NewYear” and fully switch to the Chinese pinyin name “chunjie”. The first is to truly make “chunjie” the only and standard name and title for the Spring Festival in the world, and to bring the Spring Festival under the linguistic system of our Chinese culture, breaking away from Western language. The second is to use ‘chunjie’ to completely eradicate the so-called ‘Lunar New Year’.
