The Lunar New Year is everything in China, so canceling the coronavirus celebrations is very important

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This is life in Wuhan after the warning of the coronavirus 1:33

Hong Kong (CNN) - It is the most festive time of the year in China, but celebrations have been suspended in many cities.

Saturday will be the first day of the Lunar New Year, also known in China as the Spring Festival. It is a time when families get together, and often travel great distances to get home. People are crowded with banquets, money packages known as "hong bao" are delivered, they wear the red color of luck and firecrackers fire to scare away "Nian", the legendary half dragon and half lion monster that comes out of hiding during Lunar New Year

But this year, the holiday season has become a scary season.

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At a time when people would normally enjoy the New Year holidays, China is experiencing an outbreak of coronavirus. In the six weeks since the outbreak began in the central city of Wuhan, more than 20 people died and 830 people have become ill in mainland China because of the virus, which is similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Wuhan, and several surrounding cities, are under partial closure. The Beijing authorities canceled all large-scale celebrations of the Lunar New Year, including traditional fairs and celebrations around temples.

Chinese passengers, almost all wearing capbocas, arrive to board the trains at Beijing Central Station before the annual Spring Festival on January 23, 2020.

And there are other things that threaten to put a cushion to the holiday period, which lasts 15 days.

Disneyland Shanghai temporarily closed its doors. Seven films of great success that were released in theaters this weekend have been canceled or postponed, a big problem since the holiday period is usually a great attraction for moviegoers.

Important New Year celebrations have also been canceled in the special administrative regions of Macau and Hong Kong, which have reported two cases of coronaviruses.

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It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this. The Lunar New Year is for China what is the Christmas-New Year holiday period for the United States, except that the population of China is 1.4 billion people, four times that of the United States.

Earlier this month, China prepared for 3,000 million individual trips during the Spring Festival period, a little more than 2,990 million trips last year.

Now, hundreds of thousands of people in China face interrupted travel plans. On Thursday morning, travelers queued at the Wuhan high-speed train station, trying to leave before the trains stopped working.

China's largest online travel agency announced that it would renounce Wuhan's cancellation policies and reimburse travelers if a hotel refused to reimburse the reservation fee.

Eva Kwang, 35, was at Hong Kong's West Kowloon Station on Friday to cancel her family's train tickets to Guangzhou, in the southern province of Guangdong.

She said she was sad because she couldn't see her family, but she was worried about her two children. "I think security for us is more important than my dinner with them," he told CNN. "I think I can go back and visit them after a month or two."

A man wears a protective mask and glasses before boarding a train at Beijing station on January 23, 2020.

On China's social media platforms, there has been a mixed reaction to what promises to be a quieter holiday season.

One user found something positive: instead of going from house to house visiting different family members as is traditional during the Lunar New Year period, you could call them by phone.

But another, who claimed to be in Wuhan, seemed more upset. Although the person's parents were alone on the other side of the river, they could not dine together, according to the publication. "Do you understand the pain of people in Wuhan?"

- Sherisse Pham and Alex Lin of CNN contributed reporting.

Lunarcoronavirus New Year