The five major Chinese festivals celebrated each year are occasions for family reunions and feasting. Foremost is the Lunar New Year, celebrated during the days of the first new moon of the year. It is a time when friends and relatives visit each other and exchange gifts while children and unmarried adults receive lai see, or 'lucky' money, presented in red packets.

The Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in memory of an ancient Chinese poet, Qu Yuan, who committed suicide by jumping into a river rather than compromise his honour. The festival has developed into an annual event characterised by dragon boat races and the consumption of rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves.

For the Mid-Autumn Festival on the 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar, adults and children gather under the full moon with colourful lanterns — which nowadays reflect a variety of objects rather than only the animals of the lunar zodiac — and eat mooncakes, a traditional festival delicacy.

The Ching Ming Festival in spring and the Chung Yeung Festival on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month are occasions for visiting ancestral graves. Many people mark Chung Yeung by climbing hills in remembrance of a Chinese family in ancient times that escaped a plague by fleeing up a mountain.