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Herman Jung
Instructor:
Patrick Nolan
English 1B
24 February 1997
Parents wake up
very early in the morning to cook a vegetarian breakfast in order to thank the
Goddess or their ancestors for the past year and to express their desire to
have a better year in the future. After the food is ready, they wake their
children up, wash up, and put on new clothes especially clothes with red
color. Then everyone eats a piece of
candy to start filling the next year with sugar, love, sweetness, and
happiness. After the kids are ready,
they greet their parents and everyone in the house with good morning, Happy New
Years and Gung Hay Fat Choy.
Chinatown is bedecked with lights and almost
overnight, roadside stalls sprout pussy willows, mandarin trees and plum
blossoms while food stores work feverishly to produce loads of festive goodies.
New Year as a whole the is perhaps the grandest, noisiest festival in the
Chinese calendar. New Year Eve and New Year Day are celebrated as a family, a
time of reunion and thanksgiving. The celebration is traditionally highlighted
with a religious ceremony given in honor of Heaven and Earth, the gods of the
household and the ancestors, usually our great grand parents . It's utmost significance
to go through the customary Chinese New
Years traditions: house cleaning, decorations, lots of food, and more for their
celebration.
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Chinese New Year
is a time of special celebration and
joy; therefore many old customs and performances are incorporated into the
festival celebrations and competitions held on Chinese New Years. The most
common of these are perhaps the dragon dance and lion dance.
The dragon dance was already a popular activity
by the Sung Dynasty(960-1279A.D.), and has continued to be so up to the
present. The dragon mask and boy used in the dance may be gold, green,
variegated, or firey red. The dance may be performed in the daytime or at
night. If performed at night, it is usually preceded by someone carrying a
blazing torch to illuminate the procession, which moves with the momentum of a
tidal
wave, and is a
lifelike portrayal of a celestial dragon.
Like the dragon
dance, the lion dance also has a long history among the Chinese. The difference is that fewer participants are
required, and because the lion head and body are easier to make, and since only
a small dance area is required, performance of the lion dance can be seen just
about anywhere during the Chinese New
Year Celebration. The lion is usually controlled by two people: one to
manipulate the head, and one for the tail portion. Sometimes a third person,
carrying a silk flower ball, or wearing a mask of the laughing Buddha and
holding a banana leaf fan, leads and teases the lion into action, adding to the
festive atmosphere.
Food is, without question, a highly significant
aspect of Chinese New Years and Chinese culture and ; not only does it serve
the purpose of filling one's stomach, it also strengthens family togetherness
and cohesion through the sharing of meals. The most significant is the reunion
dinner. The reunion dinner is usually
held on Lunar New
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Year's eve, which
is when members of the family gather together for the most important meal of
the year. In many families, departed
members are not forgotten; a setting is placed for them at the ancestral table
and food is offered But prior to the
reunion dinner, a spring cleaning is performed inside and outside of the home. This ritual is not only to get the home ready
for guest, but also to get rid of evil spirits.
Then the house is decorated with kumquat plants, pussy willows, and on
doors and walls are poetic couplets
written on red paper. These messages
sound better than the typical fortune cookie messages, but are symbols of good
luck and fortune.
It is very critical family members are home
for dinner, even those who are away try to be home in time for dinner. Families make every effort to ensure that
there is plenty of food on the table.
Rice is usually cooked in excess and everyone is encourage to go for a
second helping. This is to signify that
the family will always have more than enough to eat and need not go hungry
during the year. But some Chinese
consume only eat vegetarian food on the first day of the Lunar New Year. They abstain from meat , believing that it
will ensure longevity. For this reason,
Lunar New Years dishes are specially selected for their auspicious meanings. Their Cantonese names are puns for all sorts
of wishes, mainly pertaining to good fortune.
For example, a black moss seaweed pronounced "fat choy", in
Cantonese it means "homonym for exceeding in wealth" or lotus
seed-signify having many male offspring.
Other food includes a whole fish, to represent togetherness and abundance,
and a chicken for prosperity. The
chicken must be presented with a head, tail and feet to symbolize completeness.
Noodles should be uncut, as they represent long life. Then last but not least, we have desserts and
one of
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which is called
nian gao, a sweet glutinous rice made with brown sugar, and is sweet and sticky
for a good reason. The Chinese offer it
to the Kitchen God, a mystical god that watches over the household; in the hope
that it sticks in the mouth, making it difficult for him to report against the
family when he returns to Heaven a week before the Lunar New Year. The cake also sweetens the mouth,
metaphorically.
Every traditional
Chinese household should also have live blooming plants to symbolize rebirth
and new growth. Flowers are believe to
be symbolic of wealth and high positions in one's career. Lucky is the home
with a plant that blooms on New Year's Day, for that foretells a year of
prosperity. The Chinese firmly believe
that without flowers, there would be no formation of any fruits. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance to
have flowers and floral decoration.
Many Chinese
strongly believe in starting the Lunar New Year on the right note. Apart from
all the food, flowers and the must-dos, they impose numerous must-nots during
the 15 days of the Lunar New Year to further ensure good fortune. These include no fighting, no exchange of
angry words or foul language. This is to
prevent unpleasant occasions from recurring during the year, and from antagonizing
the God of Wealth, who is believed to hate loud noises. Some more traditional families abstains from
meat, because it is believed that the birthday of chicken, dogs, pigs, sheep,
and cows fall on the first six days of the Lunar New Year. It would be quite unethical (not to say
unlucky) to eat their meat during these six days, but most modern families skip
out on meat only on new years eve. Child are most watched by their parents to
make sure they don't say or perform any ominous words or actions. Chinese are very superstitious people
especially
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during new years
celebration time. They avoided saying or
doing anything that has a bad connotation.
If should an accident occurs, they mutter an appropriate saying for
dispelling misfortune. For example, it
is considered bad luck to break anything, especially a rice bowl, as it
signifies a loss of income. To neutralize
it, older folks quickly mutter " beauty amidst the shards" to wish
that good things will come from the broken pieces. If a child unwittingly utters ominous words
like sickness or death, an adult quickly counters it with "May no harm be
caused by this child's words."
The integral part of Lunar New Years I enjoy
the most is visiting of relatives and friends, bearing Mandarin oranges and
festive greetings. As a child in our new years clothes, we get a whole bunch of
red envelope money from every home we visited. While my parents exchanged
fruits with friends or relative and wish
each other " gung hay fat choy" meaning " congratulations for
striking it rich", the children play outside.
Chinese New Year
is a special time to celebrate old traditions and be with family and
friends. Families gather together to
celebrate the new years which is coming and the end of the old year. Families
cook different kinds of food to share with each other. They talk and laugh together in a big family
gathering. Unlike the Westernized New
Year, Chinese New Year is a tradition and a celebration that has been passed on
from generation to generation for thousands of years. The elders treat the New Years as a special ritual with superstitious
believes. While the young ones, is all about want fun and lots of food to eat
in a festive mood. Overall, the whole
celebration it symbolizes family unity and honors the past , present , and the
future generations.
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