Halloween: Does it Exist in China?

Celebrated on October 31 every year, Halloween is a holiday for people of all ages. Young children go out to trick-or-treat while wearing costumes, while adults and the elderly decorate their houses and hand out candy, or attend their own costume theme parties. Halloween comes from the word Hallowe’en, which means Hallowed Evening or Holy Evening. According to History.com, Halloween originated from the ancient Celtic festival, Samhain. The Celts, who occupied Northwestern Europe and especially modern-day Ireland, observed the new year on November 1, so Halloween celebrates the end of their harvest season. In that festival, bonfires would be lit, and in order to ward off ghosts, people wore costumes.

In America, people celebrate by carving pumpkins, going trick-or-treating, bobbing for apples, watching horror shows and visiting haunted houses. However, is Halloween celebrated in China? Some bars and restaurants that are slightly westernised decorate their storefronts, and even have a special menu. In Guangzhou, the XingShengLu, otherwise known as Bar Street, has many bars and restaurants that do this. The amusement park in Guangzhou, Chimelong, gives their entire park a ‘Halloween’ theme and has special attractions, such as a haunted house. There is also a street named YiDeLu in Guangzhou with a large mall that sells many Halloween costumes and decorations for cheap prices. However, this is only in cities in China with significant western influence like Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing. In other rural parts of China, they do not celebrate Halloween at all. There are many traditional festivals in China that are similar to Halloween, such as the Hungry Ghost Festival, the seventh month of the Chinese Lunar calendar, the Qing Ming festival, the Double Nine festival and the Chinese Spring festival. These festivals are usually quite serious and religious, with people cleaning the graves of their ancestors, or burning paper money or clothes for them to use in the Afterlife.

I interviewed some people asking how they celebrated Halloween. Most of them said that their compound would host a trick-or-treating event, or their friends would have costume parties. This weekend, many compounds such as Golden Lake, Greenery and Gold Arch had a Halloween event. I attended one this weekend, and collected many candies as people volunteered to hand them out.

Have a happy Halloween, and stay safe!