The first Tibetan lunar month is the one most filled with festivals, which take place almost every day. Among all, the New Year's Festival is the most important one throughout the year. So people take it most seriously. For example, the Lhasa people are beginning to prepare for it as early as in the previous month. From the middle of the 12th Tibetan month, every family begins to fry a kind of doughnut made of butter and flour called 'karsai' in various shapes. They will also prepare offerings for the deities, e. g. tsampa, barley grains, horse-beans, wild ginseng, barley ears, cockscomb flowers and the Sun & Moon tablets, all being placed in a multi-colored wooden container called Qemar. On the 28th or 29th day, every household will clean the family shrine and furniture, and even whitewash their courtyard walls. They will also decorate auspicious markings with tsampa flour on the central wall of the cleaned kitchen, or on the floor in front of the gate. On the evening of the 29th, all family members will sit around the table, and eat a kind of dumpling called as Gortu, in which some small pebbles, wool, charcoal, or hot chili, with different implications, may be jokingly stuffed. During eating, the things emerged will always trigger spells of laughing. Afterwards all people will go out to take part in a ceremony called expelling ghosts. A magnificent scene soon appears in the whole city: a few persons carrying big bowls of ghost-food are rushing in front, while a large number of people holding torches and running behind them are yelling to get rid of evil spirits from their houses, until they arrive at a big campfire, where they then smash the bowls and throw them into the fire. Before dawn of the next day, i. e. the Tibetan New Year's Day, the housewives will go to the riverside to fetch 'Lucky water' to cook the breakfast. After having breakfast, the family members, all dressed up, are solemnly waiting for the dawn, when they will begin to worship the deities and greet and toast each other. On the second day, relatives and friends will visit each other with the New Year's greeting. On the third, people will flock to Bumpari Hill in the eastern suburbs and Chakpori hill in the western suburbs to burn cypress branches, erect the prayer flag mast and hang the multi-colored flags praying for the mountain and river god's blessing. During the festival, Lhasa City is overflowing with songs and dances; shaken by exploding sounds of firecrackers and cloaked with the joyous atmosphere.