The Tibetan New Year is projected according to the Tibetan calendar. It is basically the same as our current lunar calendar. Only in the Tibetan calendar, the number of days in each month is repeated or missing. Good days can be repeated, such as "the fourth", the Tibetan people believe that it is "auspicious" days, so each month, two consecutive over the fourth; on the contrary, they believe that the unlucky days can not, such as: "the seventh On the contrary, they think that unlucky days can be avoided, such as: "the seventh day", they think it is "bad" day, so every month will be canceled the seventh day, after the sixth day of the first eight days. In Tibet all festivals and gatherings are calculated according to the Tibetan calendar, and Tibetans living in other areas generally project according to the lunar calendar.
The Tibetan people make preparations for the festival from the first half of December of the Tibetan calendar. Every family has a bucket and plate to soak barley, and then use ghee, white flour and sugar to make "Kasai" (a kind of fried food). Each family has to be allowed to service a called "Chema" of the grains bucket, bucket made of wood, outside painted with colorful floral patterns, half of which is loaded with fried wheat grains and beans, half loaded with tsampa and ginseng fruit, the top of the barley inserted into the cob, and then dotted with a number of small pieces of ghee. Some people also use ghee sculpture a colorful goat head, "Cheema" sign of the past year's good harvest, wishing a new year of wind and rain, people and animals flourish, a good harvest.
New Year's Eve, families are courtyard, room cleaned up, the house paved with a new card mat, pasted on the new year's picture. Before New Year's Eve also cleaned the stove room in the middle of the wall, with flour sprinkled with "eight auspicious emblems", in the door painted on the symbol of good luck "" word. Some also brushed on the beams of many white powder poof, indicating that the grain is full of warehouses. The windows of each family cabinet and table is also full of all kinds of fried "khasai", with ginseng fruit, crispy wang, sugar made of rice, sprinkled with salt whole ghee and milk tea, sweets, etc., but also on the "Cheema", which symbolizes good luck and prosperity.
New Year's Eve, each family to eat dough earth poi, Tibetan called "Gutu", is made of beef and mutton, radish, dough and other condiments made of a soup food. Dough of the earth poi wrapped in a variety of things, there are stones, chili peppers, wool, charcoal, and so on, to see who ate these things, ate wrapped in stone dough heralds the new year his heart hard; charcoal that his heart black; chili peppers that his mouth is powerful; wool that his heart is soft. When people eat these things, they will naturally spit them out right away, thus causing the whole family to laugh, in order to help make New Year's Eve a great success.
The first day of the Tibetan New Year. Families burn turpentine on their roofs to symbolize good fortune and display dyed barley seedlings and ears of wheat in their houses to wish for a good harvest. Before dawn, women will go to the river back to the "auspicious water"; the old man washed up, to the river to play the first bucket of water to feed the animals; the whole family put on new clothes, according to the order of the young and old sat down, the elders to the grains of the bucket, each person grabbed a little bit of food in turn, this time the young and old bless each other. Then eat dough and ghee fried ginseng fruit, then mutual barley sprinkles. This day, basically all families are closed door gathering, do not visit each other. On the second day of the year, friends and relatives visit each other to pay tribute to the New Year's greetings.
During the festival, in the square or empty mine on the grass, men dressed in various colors of Tibetan robes, women wearing earrings, gems and other jewelry, everyone in a circle dancing potshuang dance, the children are burning firecrackers. Folk also commonly held wrestling, throwing, tug-of-war, horse racing, archery and other competitions. Some villages and towns also perform traditional Tibetan opera festival. Such activities generally last three or five days.