Summary

Spring Festival is the most important and grandest traditional festival in China, embodying the Chinese people’s yearning for a better life. The exhibition Auspicious Beginning: Spring Festival Traditions in the Forbidden City features cultural relics related to Spring Festival culture in the Qing court from the Palace Museum’s collection. This is the exhibition catalogue that includes images of nearly all the 120 pieces/sets of exhibits, supplemented by research materials and papers. The catalogue has four sections: ‘Auspicious Invocation’, ‘Filial Sacrifice and Imperial Kinship’, ‘Family, Country and the World’, and ‘Winter Recreation’.