Spring in the Chinese lunisolar calendar opens with its most significant date, Chinese New Year, also called the Spring Festival, which falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice and remains the most widely observed holiday across Chinese communities worldwide, marked by family reunion meals, ancestral offerings, and a fifteen day observance closing with the Lantern Festival. Because the Chinese calendar tracks the moon while also correcting periodically to stay aligned with the solar year and its twenty four solar terms, Chinese New Year's date shifts within a roughly one month window on the Gregorian calendar from year to year rather than falling on a fixed day.
Later in spring, Qingming, the Tomb Sweeping Festival, falls at a fixed solar term roughly in early April, when families visit and tend ancestral graves, make offerings, and, in some regions, observe related customs tied to the same seasonal turn toward renewed outdoor activity after winter. The solar terms themselves, a set of twenty four points spaced through the solar year and used to time agricultural work, place several of their earliest markers, including the Beginning of Spring and Rain Water, within this season, reflecting the calendar's origins as a practical tool for a largely agrarian society tracking exactly when to prepare fields and begin planting.