春节习俗：腊月二十四 掸尘扫房子

The 24th day of the 12th month in Lunar Calendar: The folk saying goes like 腊月二十四，掸尘扫房子。

腊月二十四日，有俗语说“腊月二十四，掸尘扫房子”。

On this day, each family will thoroughly clean their house. This practice is similar to the modern idea of spring cleaning.

在这一天，每一个家庭都会彻底的清扫他们的屋子，这与现代理念“春扫”有异曲同工之妙。

However, in Chinese folk belief, cleaning up the house does not only for the hygienic reason, but also for a symbolic one.

但是，在中国传统信仰中，打扫屋子并不是仅仅为了清洁的原因，也有一定的象征意义。

In Chinese, the word of dust (尘，chen) shares the exactly same pronunciation of the word of old ( 陈，chen). Thus, 掸尘 (dan chen), or to whisk the dust, symbolises the idea of getting rid of the old and set up the new, or 除陈布新 ( chu chen bu xin).

在中文中，“灰尘”的“尘”与“陈旧”的“尘”有同样的发音，所以“掸尘”也就是“去除灰尘”，就象征着“除尘布新”，“摆脱陈旧迎来新生活”的意思。

As such, it is very important that the floor is swept toward the door as this is symbolic of sweeping away all misfortune, diseases and suffering in the past year which is the ‘old’ year.

因此，扫地的方向一定要向着大门，因为这样象征着把不幸、疾病以及去年也就是“旧”年的苦全都扫

出门外。 

After a thorough cleaning, the house will not be cleaned during the beginning of Chinese New Year as this might cause good fortune to be swept away.

在彻底的清扫之后，在中国春节伊始是不会再次清扫的，因为这样会导致好运也被扫走。

The two feather dusters (鸡毛掸子，ji mao dan zi), placed inside the porcelain vase, are used for cleaning up the furnitures and porcelains. But it is not easy to find nowadays mainly because the vacuum cleaner is more common.

在瓷花瓶里面放两只鸡毛掸子，就是用来清洁家具以及瓷器的，但是现在已经不常见了，因为有吸尘器替代。