The most important holiday in China is the Spring Festival. Preparations for New Year begin on the final days of the last lunar month, when most families clean their homes, cut their hair and buy new clothes. Houses are festooned with paper scrolls bearing auspicious poetry. On New Year's Eve, all the members of families come together to hold feasts. Jiaozi is popular in the North, while southerners favor a sticky sweet glutinous rice pudding called 'Niangao'. At midnight on New Year's Eve, people set off firecrackers to greet the arrival of the new year. On the 15th day of the 1st month of the Lunar calendar is the Lantern Festival. It normally falls at the end of February, when people traditionally come out to see lanterns in the streets or parks and eat round, sweet rice-flour dumplings, called Yuanxiao in China. The National Day celebrates the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Celebrations usually take the form. of parties in amusement parks in the daytime and fireworks and grand TV ensembles during the evening. During this time, people can have seven paid-days off. The Dragon Boat Festival falls in May on the Lunar Calendar, is in memory of Qu Yuan, a great patriotic poet and statesman of the State of Chu during the Warring States period. Qu Yuan drowned himself to protest his fatuous king. In order to protect his body from being eaten by fish, people launched dragon-like boats and threw rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves into the river. Nowadays, people still eat Zongzi to remember him, and the dragon boat contests enjoy great popularity. What do Chinese people often do before the New Year?