Name: Millions gather to celebrate Lunar New Year
Uploaded: 2026-02-17T15:08:22.000Z
Duration: 2 min 35 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Every Chinese New Year, the world's largest annual human migration gets underway, with hundreds of millions on the move across China to celebrate the country's most important holiday.

For most workers, it's the one chance they have all year to travel home.

Eating New Year's dinner with family is a cherished tradition.

Along with lion dances, red envelopes with cash, and

a widely watched television gala that this year featured hundreds of dancing humanoid robots.

A lot of preparation goes into marking the new Year, from the decorations to the food, because the Lunar New Year is more than just a holiday here.

It's a time to see family, to take stock and to reset for the coming year.

2026 is year of the Fire Horse, which, according to the Chinese zodiac, is a time for intensity and hust, possibly upheaval.

Astrologer Latao Wong compares it to driving a sports car.

But at the same time, we really have to know how to focus on the road, so to speak, and

how to balance ourselves so that we are driving the horse instead of falling off it.

That bit of cosmic nervousness highlights an uncertain economy here and could explain why, for this Chinese New Year, young people are turning to mascots.

Like a crying toy horse that went viral after its smile was accidentally sewn upside down.

Or posters of the Harry Potter character Draco Malfoy.

Because the Chinese translation of Maru Fu includes the words horse and fortune.

There's also been a rush to buy gold as a symbol of safety and good luck.

Not confident in luck alone, Eric Zhang is doing odd jobs this holiday to make ends meet.

Gigs like delivering New Year's messages to relatives or picking up decorations and hanging them for people short on time.

For me, the New Year is about being together, he Sundays.

An estimated 2 billion people around the world are marking the Lunar New Year in different ways that heed the past and look ahead with hope that it all goes smoothly.

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