8 Ways to Celebrate the Lunar New Year!
By Felix Wong
The start of the Chinese New Year on 1st February heralds the Year of the Tiger. According to Chinese custom, tigers are tenacious, authoritative, and whilst they can appear calm, there may be hidden aggression under the surface so beware! Renowned for humour and generosity, tigers have a strong sense of fairness too.
Whether you subscribe to Chinese horoscopes or not, many people of East and South East Asian descent observe - in some way or another - the varying customs, so it’s not uncommon to refer to the period as 'Lunar New Year' (LNY). And when so much of it involves food, why not get involved?!
Here are a few of the customs and symbolism that I’m familiar with:
Cleaning the house - this needs to take place before new year’s day - to sweep out bad spirits - but never on the first day of new year itself (you will sweep away your good luck).
Wearing red - red, the colour of good luck, appears everywhere throughout the festivities. Houses are adorned with red decorations, and people wear red particularly on the first day of new year (never white, which is traditionally a funereal colour)
Red packets - “hongbao”, red envelopes containing money, is given by elder family members to unmarried juniors. In some places managers will give their staff "hongbao” .. just saying boss..!
Eating noodles - symbolic of long life, noodles should not be cut when consumed over new year, so feel free to get your slurp on!
Eating fish - the Chinese word for fish is similar to the word for abundance, so fish is often eaten. Tradition dictates the fish should be kept whole, so a battered haddock from the chippy isn’t quite on point. Unless, like my local, your chip shop is owned by a Chinese family - in which case you’re adding to their wealth so arguably balance is restored.
Eating dumplings - tortellini shaped filled dumplings resemble traditional silver ingots, so you’ll often find them being served for the symbolism. Incidentally, I don’t think eating actual tortellini counts.
Exchanging oranges - when visiting friends and family, it’s traditional to bring oranges to your host. Why? The Chinese word for oranges sounds similar to the word for gold. My grandmother advises me never to give too many oranges - it’s like giving all your wealth away she warns!
Lion dance - if you’re close to a Chinatown, you’ll probably see a lion dance being performed for the restaurants around LNY. Again, this is about bringing wealth and prosperity to the establishment in the coming year. The lion often eats a lettuce hanging from the restaurant. Lettuce - that well known staple food of lions right? Again, the symbolism relates to the phonetic sound of the term for 'lettuce' in Cantonese ('sang choi'), which is similar to a phrase meaning to “create wealth.” To be fair, the lettuce usually contains a hongbao for the dancers, so it literally does create wealth.