Officers hope the longer vacation will increase consumption amid an financial stoop that’s weighing on folks’s minds.
“The general surroundings isn’t superb,” mentioned Liu Zhenqiang, 38, who works in tech. “I’ve many mates round me who’re at the moment unemployed. So if in case you have a job your self, you actually need to cherish it.”
For some, the somber temper was captured by a luxurious toy that went viral after a sewing mistake by a Chinese language retailer created the “crying horse,” greeting the brand new yr with a mournful frown.
Within the grand Chinese language custom of Spring Pageant wordplay, one other unlikely mascot has additionally emerged: the “Harry Potter” character Draco Malfoy. Some households are adorning their doorways with footage of a smirking Malfoy — performed by English actor Tom Felton — due to the auspicious Chinese language translation of his character’s title, “ma er fu,” which accommodates the phrases for “horse” and “fortune.”
This yr is not only the Yr of the Horse however the Yr of the Fireplace Horse, which in Chinese language astrology is related to depth, decisive motion and pleasure — or chaos.
Letao Wang, an expert astrologer in Hong Kong, in contrast the fireplace horse to a sports activities automobile.
“I feel the fireplace horse right here, in a great way, is telling us that a variety of issues are going to maneuver ahead,” he mentioned.
“It’s about pace. It’s about momentum. It’s about quick motion,” Wang mentioned. “However on the similar time, we actually must know the best way to give attention to the street, so to talk, and the best way to steadiness ourselves in order that we’re driving the horse as an alternative of falling off it.”
Chinese language firms try to grab on that momentum earlier than the vacation even begins, with tech giants engaged in a “crimson envelope conflict” as they compete for customers for his or her AI assistants.
Tencent and Baidu are freely giving a mixed 1.5 billion yuan ($217 million) in digital crimson envelopes, that are small money items historically handed out for the brand new yr. Alibaba is spending 3 billion yuan ($431 million) on a reduced boba tea promotion for its Qwen chatbot that generated 10 million orders within the first 9 hours, overwhelming outlets and supply riders and crashing servers.
A yr after Chinese language start-up DeepSeek rattled the worldwide tech trade with the Spring Pageant launch of its low-cost AI mannequin, new fashions are additionally anticipated from DeepSeek and others. They embody Seedance 2.0, an AI video generator from TikTok proprietor ByteDance that was launched Monday.
Although China has modified enormously in latest many years — with particular meals and new outfits that have been as soon as uncommon vacation treats now on a regular basis purchases for a lot of middle-class folks — Xu mentioned some points of the brand new yr celebration have stayed the identical.
“We nonetheless kowtow to our elders and provides New Yr greetings; these traditions stay,” he mentioned. “We even have a set menu for what to eat every day.”
“And we nonetheless purchase new garments — it doesn’t matter what, everybody within the household places on new garments on the primary day of the Lunar New Yr.”
Liu Fang, an workplace clerk from Shandong province, mentioned he thought 2026 “may be higher than earlier than,” regardless of the powerful economic system.
“Although robots are changing some labor, new industries and job openings will emerge,” he mentioned.
“Finally, it comes right down to arduous work and private means.”
Janis Mackey Frayer, Daybreak Liu and Erin Tan reported from Beijing, and Jennifer Jett reported from Hong Kong.
