New Year , or Spring Festival , is the biggest holiday in the Chinese calendar, two weeks of festivities marking the beginning of a new year in the lunar calendar. In Chinese astrology each year is associated with a particular animal from a cycle of twelve; 2000 is the year of the dragon, for example, and the passing into a new phase is a momentous occasion. Each year it falls on a different date in the Gregorian calendar, but it's usually in late January or early February. There's a tangible sense of excitement in the run-up to the festival, when China is perhaps at its most colourful, with shops and houses decorated with good-luck messages and stalls and shops selling paper money, drums and costumes. During the festival itself, however, is not an ideal time to be travelling the country - everything shuts down, and most of the population goes on the move, making travel impossible or extremely uncomfortable.

The first day of the festival is marked by a family feast at which jiaozi (dumplings) are eaten, sometimes with coins hidden inside. Each family must eat a whole fish for luck - the word for fish sounds like the word for surplus. In the countryside, firecrackers are let off almost constantly to scare ghosts away. Since fireworks are banned in cities, enterprising stall holders sell cassette tapes of explosions as a replacement. Other ghost-scaring traditions include the pasting up of images of door gods at the threshold, and the wearing of red clothes, particularly important if the animal of your birth year is coming round again. Outside the home, New Year is publicly celebrated at temple fairs , which feature acrobats, drummers, and clouds of smoke as the Chinese light incense sticks to placate the gods. After two weeks, the celebrations end with the lantern festival , when the streets are filled with multicoloured paper lanterns, a tradition dating from the Han dynasty. Many places also have flower festivals and street processions with paper dragons and other animals parading through the town. It's customary at this time to eat tang yuan'r, a delicious sticky sweet made of rice and bean paste.

January/February New Year. Celebrated during the first two weeks of the new lunar year.

February Tiancang Festival. On the twentieth day of the first lunar month Chinese peasants celebrate Tiancang, or Granary Filling Day, in the hope of ensuring a good harvest later in the year.

March Guanyin's Birthday. Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, and probably China's most popular deity, is celebrated, most colourfully in Taoist temples, on the nineteenth day of the second lunar month.

April 5 Qing-Ming Festival. This festival (Tomb Sweeping Day) is the time to visit the graves of ancestors and burn ghost money in honour of the departed.

April 13-15 Water Splashing Festival. Popular in Yunnan Province. Anyone on the streets is fair game for a soaking.

May 4 Youth Day. Commemorating the student demonstrators in Tian'anmen Square in 1919, which gave rise to the Nationalist "May Fourth Movement". It's marked in most cities with flower displays.

June 1 Children's Day. Most schools go on field trips, so if you're visiting a popular tourist site be prepared for mobs of kids in yellow baseball caps.

June/July Dragon-boat Festival. On the fifth day of the fifth lunar month dragon-boat races are held in memory of the poet Qu Yuan, who drowned himself in 280 BC. Some of the most famous venues for this festival in the country are Yueyang in Hunan Province, and Hong Kong. The traditional food to accompany the celebrations is zongzi (lotus-wrapped rice packets).

August/September Ghost Festival. The Chinese equivalent of Halloween, this is a time when ghosts from hell are supposed to walk the earth. It's not celebrated so much as observed; it's regarded as an inauspicious time to travel, move house or get married.

September/October Moon Festival. On the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar the Chinese celebrate the Moon Festival, also known as the Mid-autumn Festival, a time of family reunion that is celebrated with fireworks and lanterns. Moon cakes, biscuits with a rich filling of sugar, sesame and walnut, are eaten, and plenty of moutai is consumed. In Hong Kong, the cakes are stuffed with duck eggs.

September/October Double Ninth Festival. Nine is a number associated with yang, or male energy, and on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month such qualities as assertiveness and strength are celebrated. It's believed to be a good time for the distillation (and consumption) of spirits.

September 28 Confucius Festival. The birthday of Confucius is marked by celebrations at all Confucian temples. It's a good time to visit Qufu, in Shandong Province, when elaborate ceremonies are held in the temple there.

October 1 National Day. Everyone has a day off to celebrate the founding of the People's Republic. TV is even more dire than usual as it's full of programmes celebrating Party achievements.

December 25 Christmas. This is marked as a religious event only by the faithful, but for everyone else it's an excuse for a feast and a party.