What was the New Year celebration process like in the Qing Dynasty palace? Will the king give out red envelopes?

The process of celebrating the New Year is to give red envelopes, post couplets, worship ancestors, and have a banquet with ministers. The monarch will give out red envelopes, but the word "Fu" in them is not money. During the Qing Dynasty, every first month, the monarch would make red envelopes and distribute them to everyone. However, these New Year's money did not include money, but the word "福" written by the monarch himself. In the beginning, these red envelopes distributed by the monarch were only given to high-ranking officials and princes in the court. After that, all the ministers in the court received red envelopes from the monarch. In fact, in addition to the princes and nobles, people who serve the king can also get this benefit, but the blessing characters they get are not written by the king himself.

In addition, in the first month of the year, the Eight Banners Ice Performance, also known as the Ice Military Parade, will be held at the Royal Palace. Such an event was held to publicly train the soldiers of the Qing Dynasty, and later it became a spectator show. The tradition of pasting Spring Festival couplets has been around since ancient times, even in the Qing Dynasty. During the Chinese New Year, the palace also needs to post Spring Festival couplets. The monarch sends red envelopes to everyone, so the people in the palace can't be idle. They spend the whole day posting Spring Festival couplets, which is a heavy task. The Forbidden City is very large, so the number of couplets is also very large. Although they are all couplets, the ones of the Manchu people are different from those of the Han people. The couplet paper used by the Manchu people is white.

When everything is ready, the people in the palace can finally rest and wait for the holidays to celebrate the New Year. On the morning of New Year's Eve, the New Year's banquet began in the palace. On this day, the monarch can be said to be the busiest person, because he starts worshiping the gods in the morning and ends at noon. After that, he would have a meal somewhere else to deepen the friendship between the Manchu and Mongolian peoples. Only in this way can the country be stable. At dinner time, the king would enjoy it with his family.

The monarch and his mother happily spent the New Year's Eve together. On the first day of the Lunar New Year, the king is still the busiest person. To celebrate the New Year, the monarch and his ministers had a banquet together and watched performances, which is very similar to our Spring Festival Gala. The first day of the Lunar New Year can be said to be the busiest day in the palace. You can eat all kinds of delicious food during the New Year, which makes the chefs in the imperial dining room very busy. They cooked delicious food for the entire palace, and the monarch naturally added more people to the royal kitchen.