- Chinese New Year" Legend
The Chinese New Year Season lasts for an entire month...
If you live in an area that has a Chinatown, chances are that at some point you've watched the Chinese New Year celebrations.
However, Chinese New Year (also called the Spring Festival) doesn't begin and end on a single weekend. Instead, it runs from the middle of the last month of the previous year (based on the Chinese calendar) to the middle of the first month of the new year.
By the time the New Year arrives, families have already spent several days preparing for the big event; cleaning the house, buying gifts, and cooking festive foods.
People often wonder why the date for Chinese New Year changes each year. The Chinese calendar is a combination solar/lunar calendar, based on a number of rather complex astronomical calculations, including the longitude of the sun.
Chinese New Year falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice (all months begin with a new moon). In 2008 (year 4706 on the Chinese calendar) Chinese New Years falls on February 7th.
How did Chinese New Year come to be celebrated? According to an ancient legend, people were once tormented by a beast called a Nian - a ferocious creature with an extremely large mouth, capable of swallowing several people in a single bite.
Relief from the Nian came only when an old man tricked the beast into disappearing. In reality, New Years festivities probably evolved from a desire to celebrate the end of winter and the fertility and rebirth that come with the spring, much like the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia.
Today, New Years is about family reunions and wishing everyone good fortune in the coming year. The Spring Festival is China's major traditional holiday, and is also celebrated in other parts of Southeast Asia, including Vietnam (where New Year's Day is called "Tet"), Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and of course, Hong Kong.
However, in my research I couldn't find any mention of Chinese New Year's celebrations in Japan. Lisa Heupel, an expert on Japanese Culture, came up with a possible reason - apparently the Japanese followed the lunar calendar until the middle of the nineteenth century.
However, after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, they adopted the Gregorian calendar. Since that time New Years is celebrated on January 1st. While there are other popular festivals celebrating the arrival of spring, such as Hanami or the cherry blossom viewing festival, for the most part Chinese New Year goes unnoticed in Japan, except for a few small celebrations by the Chinese who live there.
- Symbolic Food and Recipes to Celebrate Chinese New Year
Given the importance of food in Chinese culture, it is not surprising that food plays a major role in Chinese New Year celebrations. "Lucky" foods are served through the two week Chinese New Year celebration, also called the Spring festival.
Symbolic Chinese Foods
What gives a certain food symbolic significance?
Sometimes it is based on appearance. For example, serving a whole chicken during the Chinese New Year season symbolizes family togetherness.
Noodles represent a long life; an old superstition says that it's bad luck to cut them. Both clams and Spring Rolls symbolize wealth; clams because of their resemblance to bouillon, and Spring Rolls because their shape is similar to gold bars.
On the other hand, a food may have special significance during Chinese New Year because of the way the Chinese word for it sounds.
For example, the Cantonese word for lettuce sounds like rising fortune, so it is very common to serve a lettuce wrap filled with other lucky food.
Tangerines and oranges are passed out freely during Chinese New Year as the words for tangerine and orange sound like luck and wealth, respectively. And let's not forget pomelos. This large ancestor of the grapefruit signifies abundance, as the Chinese word for pomelo sounds like the word for "to have."
Fish also play a large role in festive celebrations. The word for fish, "Yu," sounds like the words both for wish and abundance.
As a result, on New Year's Eve it is customary to serve a fish at the end of the evening meal, symbolizing a wish for abundance in the coming year.
For added symbolism, the fish is served whole, with head and tail attached, symbolizing a good beginning and ending for the coming year.
And what about the sweet, steamed cakes that are so popular during the Chinese New Year season? Cakes such as Sticky Rice Cake have symbolic significance on many levels. Their sweetness symbolizes a rich, sweet life, while the layers symbolize rising abundance for the coming year.
Finally, the round shape signifies family reunion. So if you missed the fireworks and celebrations on New Year's Eve, don't worry - you'll have another chance to celebrate.
Chinese New Year falls on February 7th in 2008. It is the Year of the Rat.
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So guess what? Chinese New Year is arrving in 2 days time! Wish all who celebrate Chinese New Year has a prosperous year, to have good wealth and of course good health!
Happy Chinese New Year!!~
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