Chinese New Year Taboos: What Not to Do, and Why, Day by Day

The Chinese New Year taboos are a set of first-days customs about what not to do while the new year is settling in: no sweeping on day one, no washing hair, no scissors, no broken crockery, no borrowed money, no mourning colors. None of them is arbitrary. Each taboo runs on its own piece of logic, usually a homophone or a plain metaphor, and once you know the logic the whole list becomes easy to remember. This page walks the taboos day by day, from New Year's Day through the fifteenth, and gives each custom its reason. The next Chinese New Year falls on February 6, 2027, opening a fire goat year; the taboos below apply the same way every year.

The organizing idea behind all of them is simple: the first days of the year set the pattern for the rest of it. What you sweep out, wash away, cut, break, or lend in the opening days, the tradition reads as a preview of the year. So the customs protect the things everyone wants the year to hold, luck, wealth, and harmony, by suspending the ordinary actions that resemble losing them. It is the same instinct that drives the red envelope conventions, where the amount is chosen for what its numbers sound like.

Day 1: the strictest day

The first day of 正月 (zhēng yuè, the first lunar month) carries the heaviest set of taboos, because day one is the template.

No sweeping, no taking out the trash. The house is cleaned top to bottom before New Year's Eve, and then the broom rests. Sweeping on day one is read as sweeping the newly arrived luck straight out the door, and carrying out the trash is carrying the household's wealth out with it. In homes that must sweep, the folk workaround is to sweep inward, toward the center of the room, and keep the pile indoors.

No washing your hair. This one runs on a homophone. 髮 (fà, hair) sounds like 發 (fā, to prosper, the fa of 發財 fā cái, to get rich). Washing your hair on day one is washing your prosperity away just as it arrives, so hair washing waits, conventionally through day one and often day two as well.

No scissors, no needles. Sharp tools cut, and on day one nothing should be cut, least of all the year's fortune. Scissors get a second charge in the folk telling: their blades snapping open and shut resemble quarreling mouths, so using them invites a year of arguments. Needlework is set aside for the same family of reasons.

No breaking things, and the recovery phrase if you do. A broken bowl or glass on day one is a bad omen for the year, because 碎 (suì, shattered) sounds exactly like 歲 (suì, year). The tradition supplies its own remedy. Wrap the pieces in red paper and say 歲歲平安 (suì suì píng ān, "peace year after year"), which turns the shattered suì back into the yearly suì and converts the accident into a blessing. It is one of the most elegant recoveries in the whole custom set.

No lending or borrowing money. Money that leaves your hands on day one sets a pattern of money leaving your hands all year, and a debt collected on New Year's Day is considered deeply rude for the same reason in reverse. The convention is that debts are settled before New Year's Eve so that everyone crosses into the year clean.

No black or white outfits. Black and white are the mourning colors, worn at funerals, so wearing them on day one dresses the year in loss. Red and bright colors are the convention instead; if it is your own zodiac year, red is practically the uniform, for reasons covered at ben ming nian.

No porridge at breakfast, in some regions. In this custom, plain rice porridge is the food of poverty, what households ate when there was nothing else, so starting the year with it invites a poor year. This taboo is regional rather than universal: it is widely observed in southern China and Southeast Asia, while other regions instead mark day one with a vegetarian breakfast and treat that as the custom. If your family has never heard of it, that is normal.

Day 2: the daughters return

Day two is 回娘家 (huí niáng jiā, the return to the natal home), when married daughters visit their own parents, traditionally with husband and children and gifts in even numbers. The hair-washing pause conventionally extends through today, and one more water custom sits on days one and two: no washing clothes, because these two days are kept as the birthday of the water god, and laundering on his birthday is poor manners toward the water itself.

Day 3: 赤口, the quarrel day

Day three is 赤口 (chì kǒu, "red mouth"), the day of the quarrelsome tongue. The tradition holds that arguments spark easily on this day, so the visiting rounds of days one and two are conventionally paused: people stay home, avoid social calls, and give the day no chance to produce a quarrel that would sour a new relationship for the year. In some regions the day is spent at temples instead. Modern families often skip this one, but it is why older relatives may look faintly alarmed at a day-three visit.

Day 5: 破五, when the taboos break

Day five is 破五 (pò wǔ, "breaking the five"), and the name says it: this is the day most of the taboos lift. The brooms come back out, the accumulated trash finally leaves the house, normal cooking and work resume, and in many regions the day belongs to welcoming the God of Wealth back into the home and reopening shops for the year, a custom that has its own echo in the almanac's marked days for business opening dates.

Day 7: everyone's birthday

Day seven is 人日 (rén rì, "the day of humankind"), the folk birthday of every person at once, from the creation sequence in which humans were made on the seventh day. It is a day for celebration rather than restriction; in Southeast Asia it is the day of the prosperity toss salad, eaten communally with everyone's chopsticks in the pile.

Day 15: the lantern close

Day fifteen is 元宵節 (yuán xiāo jié, the Lantern Festival), the first full moon of the year and the formal close of the New Year period. Lanterns go up, sweet glutinous rice balls are eaten for family togetherness, and the taboo season is fully over.

The one that lasts the whole month

One custom outlives day five: the first-lunar-month haircut taboo, in which cutting your hair in 正月 is said to harm your mother's brother. The full story, including the mishearing that created it, is at the haircut dates guide, along with how the almanac marks favorable haircut days for the rest of the year. The almanac's day-marking system itself, the 宜 and 忌 columns that govern all of these calendar customs, is explained in the Chinese almanac guide.

When is the next Chinese New Year?

Chinese New Year 2027 falls on Saturday, February 6, 2027, opening the year of the fire goat. The taboos above run from that day through February 20, 2027, the fifteenth day. If you want to know how the current year is treating your own zodiac sign in the meantime, the 2026 luck checker reads it from your birth year.

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Sources and standard: the day-by-day structure and the individual taboos on this page were cross-checked on 11 Jul 2026 against China Highlights, Travel China Guide, chinesenewyear.net, and the Confucius Institute for Scotland's published taboo guides; the homophone logics (fa for hair and prosperity, sui for shattered and year, the sui sui ping an recovery phrase) were confirmed across China Highlights and Travel China Guide; the porridge taboo is marked regional because sources report it unevenly by region; the February 6, 2027 date and fire goat designation were checked against the Smithsonian Institution and China Highlights. All of it is presented as documented folk custom, cultural material rather than prediction.