Happy New Year! 1/26/4707

I grew up celebrating Chinese New Year (though it certainly isn’t just the Chinese who observe a lunar calendar) as opposed to the “other” one that begins with a large disco ball dropping in Times Square at Dick Clark’s command. Though my dad would on occasion (the occasion being if he was working) open a bottle of champagne in the waning hours of December 31st and the next day was all about breakfast crepes with lemon and powdered sugar, the Rose Parade, and endless bowl games—Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, Cotton, Aloha-- before the abomination of the national championship existed, I can’t say we really celebrated January 1. As with many things for which I am grateful about my childhood, celebrating the tradition-laden Chinese New Year is one of them. Here are my 8 (lucky number eight) reasons why.

1) Once more with feeling
Though it seems as if they have fallen out of fashion, new year’s resolutions were one of the American traditions my parents liked as it meant teaching us about having goals. By January 21st or so, I noticed that I and a lot of other people forgot or just plain broke our resolutions. When Chinese New Year came around 4 or 6 weeks later, having the year begin anew—again-- was a restart for my resolve. I can’t say it actually helped me accomplish my goals but I liked the opportunity to recommit, and who doesn’t like a do-over?

2) My people’s holiday
I am biracial. My mother is Chinese and my father is a third generation Californian of German and Celtic ancestry. Chinese traditions held equal if not greater sway than American ones in my family. In the 1960s, my mother and her family were some of the few Asians in our suburb. Like many immigrants, her ethos was to be Chinese and American but never to stand out. You could be proud of your traditions but never political. That’s why I was surprised when my mother finally caught up with “yellow pride.” I think it was 1975, and my mother announced she was keeping us home from school for Chinese New Year. First of all, in my family you never missed school unless, well, you were dead. I asked her why. She said, a little shakily as if she had the emotional reasoning for this but not the logic, “Well, we have our holidays too, and you should be able to honor them.” Uh, okay. I’m glad she picked this holiday as the one we should miss school for rather than the one where we had to clean the ancestors graves and then eat poached chicken graveside; that one weirded me out.

3) Fill the sugar bowls and don’t cut your hair
I like ritual. And superstition. For Chinese New Year there are so many of these to follow in order to “ensure” prosperity. Fill the sugar bowls and your wallet so that on New Year’s Day, you will have sweetness and abundance all year (see, the Chinese already knew “the Secret” and the Law of Attraction). Don’t wash your hair or sweep the house on New Year’s Day lest you wash/sweep away the good luck that has come to you (I love how the default position is good luck). Eat only vegetables on the first day of the New Year in order to purify your body for a healthy year (and no bad karma from killing a sentient being for dinner). I’ve never actually done an assessment to see if any of these work but I like that I must start my year by being attentive. And it beats a champagne hangover…

4) Slush fund
Taking care of children, assuring their health and prosperity is an important aspect of the New Year celebration. Married folk are supposed to give lay see, red envelopes containing money, to the children in the family. I loved this when I was little as it funded my purchasing Beatles’ albums. Sadly, for my mother, I am still eligible for lay see (read: single).

5) There ain’t no timeline
The Western calendar goes inexorably forward. And, yes, it is the year 4707 in the Chinese calendar but that’s not really how time is measured. It is the year, again, of the Ox. The Earth Ox, specifically. The Ox year comes every 12 years, and the Earth Ox comes every sixty. While the Chinese do not believe they can predict the future, because they view time as cyclical, they find familiarity and paradigms as each “new” year arrives. The Rat (last year) favors saving, so spendthrifts cannot do well in a Rat year. The Ox doesn’t take shortcuts and believes in hard, methodical work. (Obama is an Ox; listen to the Ox language of his inaugural speech.) I like the cyclical concept of time, I like the framework, and I like the astrology. Way cuter than Old Man 2008 and Diapered Baby 2009. Oh, and did I mention next year is the year of the Tiger? MY year.

6) People of Color
With December 31st, the old year is saluted and the New Year welcomed in the colors of winter: black, silver, white. Not really even colors but metallics and stone. The festivity strikes me as cold, distant, elitist where we should be almost fatigued by such luxe. But Chinese New Year is heralded with the colors of a pulsing life: red, orange, gold and green. It is a welcoming of Spring, of life, of possibility, of curves rather than edges.

7) Have you eaten yet?
In a country that had a history of being plagued by famine every twenty years, there’s no better way to ask someone how s/he is than to ask if s/he has eaten yet. And, certainly, there is no better way to open the new year than to begin with a feast. The Chinese New Year dinner is a gathering of riches, both edible and familial. Within the first two weeks of the new year, generations come together to share in a bounty that will presage the abundance to come. The food is symbolic—a whole fish because the Chinese word for fish is a homonym for surplus and rain, oysters because they are a homonym for goodness, shrimp and pork slices because their roundness symbolizes gold coin, leafy greens because their name sounds like fortune—and it is plentiful. Cold appetizers of beef heart, pig shank, and jellyfish were followed by a parade of foods from sea and terra firma. My cousins and I always favored the Peking duck part of the meal: we loved the richness of the crisp duck skin paired with the sweetness of the hoisin sauce, green onion, and steamed bun. There was never enough for us. So we went, like beggars, from the children’s table (tables were separated by age) to the “aunties” table where the wizened, gap-toothed, widowed matriarchs of the clan sat. The Chinese can deny their chubby cheeked children nothing, so another plate of Peking duck came our way.

8) Thanksgiving
It is one of the great sadnesses of my adult years that the multigenerational, 20-30 person Chinese New Year dinner is now a part of my past. The matriarchs and patriarchs are gone; the young ones know neither the language nor the traditions. I try to hold on by having my own Chinese New Year dinners to which I invite my friends and by sharing with my students all that I know about the rituals, traditions, symbolism and stories. But it’s not the same. It all feels quaint, a parlor trick rather than a way to bind past to present and blood to blood. When people look at me, it is easy for them to tell my parentage is EurAsian yet it is getting harder and harder for me to hold on to and evidence my Chinese cultural heritage. I used to laugh when my mother would get excited that her grandson liked to eat rice and gaai bao (chicken buns). To her, that food preference is the thread tying him to her, to his ancestors, to his Chinese-ness. For me, Chinese New Year is that ever-thinning thread.