This study, which has been conducted in the spirit of a symbologically inclined anthropology, explores one of the major manifestations of Chinese popular tradition - the celebration of the New Year in a lunar calendar of very ancient origins. Focus here is on the various New Year customs of Central China, the area of the extended lake-land in the mid-Yangzi Valley, in late imperial times. A multitude of folk practices are analyzed within a holistic perspective on Chinese traditional society and the result is a new picture of a world of the past in which the social rhetorics of gender, lineage continuity and ancestry are challenged by ritual manifestations of iconic symbolism.