Chinese New Year dos and don’ts: 10 taboos and superstitions from not washing your hair to not wearing black

The Chinese New Year is upon us, with billions of people around the world welcoming the start of the new lunar calendar.

The celebration is one of the biggest in Asia, and celebrated across the globe by the millions of people who have emigrated from China, or have ancestral links to the country.

As with many Chinese traditions, the New Year holiday is one loaded with symbolism and metaphor, one in which even common, everyday objects and actions can take on new significant meanings in the context of the celebrations.

And just as there are things that are said to bring a person luck and good fortune for the year ahead, there are others that are thought to have the opposite effect, and could even be offensive to another person.

So what should you avoid doing during the Lunar New Year celebrations? Here is everything you need to know.

What not to do on Chinese New Year

As is tradition, all debts must be paid before New Year’s Eve, and money should never be lended on New Year’s Day. If somebody owes you money, you shouldn’t go to their home to demand payment, as those who do so will have bad luck all year long.

Since the first and second days of the new year are observed as the water god’s birthday, people avoid washing their clothes on those days. Washing garments is said to be disrespectful to the water god, and water was viewed by the ancients as a symbol of abundance, therefore the act of throwing out water after washing is thought to symbolise the throwing away of wealth.

Washing hair is also avoided on the day of the Chinese New Year, but for slightly different reasons. Since the Mandarin word for “hair” shares the same character and sound as facai, meaning "to grow affluent”, it is considered bad luck to wash one’s fortune away at the start of the New Year.

Another one for the housework averse: sweeping is thought to symbolise throwing money away, and taking out the bins is a metaphor for expelling luck or fortune from the home.

This one’s a little more obvious, but while wearing white or black, colours which are usually linked with mourning, may go unnoticed during Western holidays, wearing them over Chinese New Year could cause offence.

Another seemingly simple rule to follow (nobody wants to be in hospital at any time of the year), hospital visits are avoided over the New Year period, as it is thought that doing so will make the person in question unwell for the remainder of the upcoming year - unless a genuine emergency arises, of course.

Breaking objects is often considered a symbol of bad luck in any Western cultures (seven years bad luck for the breaking of a mirror, for instance), but in Chinese custom, breaking a bowl, plate, glass, vase, or mirror represents incompleteness and misfortune, and can portend bad luck, financial loss or a rift in the family.

Whether you’re fluent in Chinese languages, or you’re just stuck with plain old English, avoid using terms that conjure up images of demise, illness and poverty etc, and instead substitute euphemisms instead.

There are dozens of food dos and don’ts to bear in mind too. We’ve rounded those up here.

And finally, one for the new parents, who should do everything in their power to stop their children from crying since it is thought that crying will bring bad luck to the family.