Happy the Year of the Dog! – Pic of the Week

Today, February 16, is New Year’s Day on the Chinese lunar calendar. This is the Year of the Dog. As explained in my previous blog post, Transition from the Lunar Calendar to the Western Calendar Under Chinese Law, the People’s Republic of China officially uses the same Gregorian calendar as the one used in the U.S. Many public holidays, however, are in observance of festivals on the lunar calendar, such as the Spring Festival (Lunar New Year), Qingming Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, and Mid-Autumn Festival. Each year, China’s State Council formulates and declares the public holidays of the next year. According to the declaration of public holidays for 2018, the days for observance of  the Spring Festival this year are February 15- 21.

Here below is a Chinese calligraphic work, Lanting Xu in Regular Script (kai shu) written out by one of our talented foreign law interns Yichao Zhang. Lanting Xu is a piece of Chinese calligraphy work composed by the well-known calligrapher Wang Xizhi from the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420). The original Lanting Xu was written in the Running Script (xing shu). In this timeless classic in ancient Chinese calligraphy and literature, Wang described a delightful spring purification ceremony and expressed his sentiments about life, death, and passage of time.