Happy Lunar New Year - Ling Hao, KP Coordinator
Lunar New Year (過年 Guo Nian)! Where should I begin?
“Nian” was a monster in our legend. “Nian” would sleep during the year and woke up to eat people on New Year’s Eve. People gathering together with their family to fight the monster and celebrate for their survival on the New Year’s Day. Over the years, people learned from the experiences that “Nain” does not like loud noise and colour bright red. People started to put red paper all around the house and making loud noise to keep the monster away. The strategies evolved into what we are familiar today. The different type of red/gold decorations and many firecrackers.
My grand parents (both of my father and mother sides) moved to Taiwan to escape from the Communist in between 1942-1943 because of the civil war. Our family tradition was based on what my grand parents’ memories.
“Guo Nian” in my memory means all of the good things. The air was full of different smells (variety yummy food/firecrackers), loud noise (scramming by excitement/laughter/music/fighting with cousins who you only see once a year). “Guo Nian” has been something I looking forward for the entire year when I was a little child.
Due to the Lunar New Year always landed on different day depending the lunar calendar, our government would have to adjust the school’s winter break accordingly each year to make sure the Lunar New Year would landed during the winter break for all of the children. (School’s winter break usually happen around mid Jan to early Feb).
The lunar New Year preparation usually started approximately from Lunar Year December 30/31 until the January 15th (元宵, yuan xiao). “Guo Nian” means the whole 15-16 days in our culture. I remembered that my parents would took us back to my 爺爺 “yéye” (father side grand pa) 奶奶 nǎi nai (father side grand ma) home a few days earlier to help with all of the things that need to be done. The kitchen was children’s favour place as different yummy food items has been prepared from day to night during the whole time. Adult were busy shopping and bring home different snack/food/drinks everyday. There would be no “bed time” for children because routine would be out of the window. Eat and play were the only things that happened in children’s mind. Everyone has to help with cleaning the house from top to bottom. The TV plays special programs from morning to night, and all of the stores on the street played the special songs. It was almost like“NO RULES” in the house as adult cannot really discipline children during that time.
On Lunar year eve, we usually eat a light dinner early in the evening. The main dinner would happen at midnight. Different province/ family often has their own special tradition dishes to eat on New Year’s Eve. My family came from the north part of Mainland China, and our tradition was making dumplings after our regular dinner. We would quickly clean up after the dinner and start to prepare everything to make dumplings. The dumpling is the symbol of Money. My family usually prepared to have 20-30 new/cleaned coins to put into 20-30 dumplings randomly. Making dumplings with the whole family (grand parents/parents/aunts and uncle/cousins) has been one of my best memories in childhood. Adults would watch the time carefully to make sure the dumpling feast would be ready to eat at midnight. When the adults were preparing for the midnight feast, the children would move in between making dumplings and shooting off firecrackers at strangers or each other outside of the house!
The feast stared at the midnight. Who got the most coins from the cooked dumplings would be the luckiest person in family for the coming Year. I remembered that my cousins and I were trying to eat as much as our little tummy could handle every year. After the dumplings, we would play either card games/dice/mah-jong until we could not hold our eyes open. Stay awake on New Year’s Eve also means to extend your parent’s life.
In my family, everyone has to wake up early on the New Year day. We would eat the sticky rice cake for breakfast. Everyone has new clothes to wear (from inside and out/top and bottom). We wish each other happy new year (Guo Nian Hao/Gong Xi Fa Cai). We would go from the highest seniority in the family to the lowest. That was the time the children get the red envelops from the adults. The relative/neighbors would also go to each other’s house to greet each other.
After moved to North America and having my own family, my husband and I tried to keep some of the traditions. Things like the story about the “Nian”; try to get together with friends/family during the weekend; cook some of the tradition dishes from both of our family. As I grow older, celebrate the Lunar New Year started to have a different meaning to me. It means being together with the people you care and love. It means to be thankful to each other and remember how lucky we are. To end the year with gratefulness and start the New Year with blessing each other for a great start. With our special day just around the corner, I hope the year of Rabbit will be kind to all of us. “Guo Nian Hao”!
