The eight festivals of the year
Spring Festival, Lantern Festival, Qingming, Double Fifth, Zhongyuan, Mid-Autumn, winter solstice and New Year’s Eve: eight great festivals, and ancestors offered to at every one.
Pronunciation shí nián bā jié｜Belief and processions｜One entry in the Chaoshan glossary
What it means
“Shi nian” is the sequence of the year, “ba jie” the eight great festivals. People here make the offering to the ancestors first and eat afterwards, and the rice cakes change with the season: mouse-ear-herb cake at Qingming, zong balls at the Double Fifth, lard-pastry mooncake at Mid-Autumn, rice balls at the winter solstice — one kind to each festival.
Each of the eight has its own centre of gravity: the god processions at the Lantern Festival, the feeding of the dead at Zhongyuan, the tile-kiln burning at Mid-Autumn. The dates run by lunar day and solar term, once round the year.
When you see it
From the first month to the twelfth there is something every month. The offering is made in the family hall or the lineage hall, with the table laid out and the household or the lineage taking incense in order of seniority.
Words easily confused
The eight festivals run by the lunar calendar, the gods’ birthdays by the temple’s own calendar, and village days by the village’s — three kinds of date on three systems, often falling in the same month, and none of them standing in for another.
Custom in Chaoshan villages; this page describes only, and neither endorses superstition nor prescribes behaviour.
Read next: The ritual year: how the year is kept.
Same group: worshipping the gods, the gods’ birthdays, winter-festival balls.
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Last revised: 3 November 2026