Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is the festive season where people with Chinese heritage celebrate with their family at home, wherever home is.

Following the lunar calendar, Chinese New Year (CNY) falls in January or February of the Gregorian calendar each year and lasts for officially 15 days. Each year is represented by one of the 12 Chinese zodiacs. Some believe the zodiacs influence an individual’s personality and even a country’s fortune. For some others, it only means CNY decorations with a Chinese zodiac cannot be reused until 12 years later!

Year 2022 is the year of the tiger.

As a kid, receiving red packets (red envelopes filled with money) during CNY is the most important way to earn your income of the year (your mileage may vary). Its origin being that there is an evil monster called “Sui” and based on the folklore of the Han people the money would help fight off “Sui” and bring peace to kids. Whilst it is normally given to children by married couples, somehow in my dad’s side of the extended family, its recipient got extended to simply unmarried persons. So at the age of 30+, I am still somewhat embarrassingly receiving free money once a year, even from my younger, married cousins.

On top of that, there are many different traditions and rules that we follow (to various degrees) to preserve the good luck of the entire year. For example, we wouldn’t get a haircut over the CNY period, because the word “hair” and “prosperity” sound the same in Chinese, so it is naturally bad luck to cut away your prosperity at the start of the year. We would also light up noisy firecrackers and organise lion dances (a performance of two dancers in one lion-like costume) with loud, banging music. This is because in our folklore we also had another monster called “Nian” that would come round during CNY eve to hurt us, but its weaknesses are loud noises, red colour and bright light – all of which firecrackers and lion dance sufficiently provide. (To be fair, my parents’ dog is also scared of those things.) (A short 2.5-minute clip of Lion Dances)

Like many cultural celebrations, food is a central point of CNY. One of the special dishes is “Yee Sang”. It is a big plate of colourful, crunchy crackers or vegetables with fish (same pronunciation as the word “abundance”) placed in the middle of the dinner table. The ceremony of eating it is that we use our chopsticks to pick up the ingredients as high as possible (repeatedly, with the aim to toss the ingredients together like a salad) while chanting prosperous phrases, the louder the better! It is always such a joyous act. (A short clip of the Yee-Sang ceremony)

As I left Malaysia and met other Chinese around the world, I realised that many of what I thought was traditionally Chinese, including the Yee Sang dish, were unique to the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia and Singapore. Some of our Chinese ancestors were not part of The Great Cultural Revolution of China in the 1960s/70s, and thus continued with traditions originating from their own clans, with different dialects, traditions and beliefs, and even enhanced and adapted to their new homes. Some traditions have also been around for so long that their origins are no longer clear.

I would really encourage you to ask your Chinese friends how they celebrate their Chinese New Year. In fact, Lunar New Year is also celebrated by other people, such as Vietnamese. In this short instagram video about the Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration it seems that there are common elements with Chinese New Year. Culture is about the people and their living and breathing collective rituals in honour of their roots and current realities, and sometimes it simply cannot be defined by the modern, national borders.