HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! (Year of the Rat, or Mighty Mouse, 4706)
By Lily Jou, License Acupuncturist, Teacher of Year 2006, Researcher
Akin to Christmas time when every member of the family makes the yearly journey back home to celebrate with Mom, Dad, and other generations, Chinese people take this Yearly celebration quite sentimentally. In fact, this event has a span of a month (till the next lunar new moon) to allow for ancient methods of travelling from nearby towns. That means, one can celebrate Chinese New Year till March 7 th!
During the actual gathering, every one wears red, a happy color, or black and other auspicious colors. (Never any thing white, as that is what one wears to a funeral.) New clothes (ordered and made by tailors a month ago, of course) can now be worn and displayed for the first time. Always, there must be a lot of ready-to-eat foods on display: tangerines (or big grapefruit) stacked on top on one another, cooked chicken steamingly hot, hot cups of teas, white rice in bowls with steam Qi rising, on the table, mixed with the incense smokes curling upwards into the air. Candies in all shapes and colors entice alongside.
Actually, these foods are not to be eaten right away, as the Ancestors (those who have passed on) are honored first and are invited (sometimes by name) to come savor the aroma of the foods on display. They get first bite, so to speak. After the steams are gone, then one knows that the Ancestors have enjoyed themselves and have left, or are now back to looking after their decendents. This waiting can take hours, it seems, to a young child. But once the steams are gone, the food on the table is up for grabs!
What any child (and unmarried adults) looks forward to meanwhile is the giving of the "red envelope" - Hong Bao - by the parents and other relatives coming to visit. This envelope can be ornate, usually with the Family Name or other Beneficient figure, but it is the inside that counts - the money! To encourage prosperity for the year (both for the giver and receiver), parents and other married relatives give the child these little red envelopes. What a joy it is to have many relatives (even when the child visits their house, the child receives a Hong Bao)! Double coins are lucky. In America, any denomination other than "4" or "10" as those homonyms mean ..."the end of life."
The dinner celebration (which tends to be about 3 hours or longer), if one's family can afford to, can happen in a Chinese Restaurant, where a 10-Course-Meal is served! And you thought a four course meal is special! Let us end on this note: should you have a chance to sample this fare at a Chinese New Year Celebration, please enjoy the delicacies: Thousand-year-old egg, shark's fin soup, et cetera!
Lily Jou is a license Acupuncturist, owner of Immediate Pain Relief -a newly formed affordable community Acupuncture on the corner of Elm and Colfax in Studio B, where pain is rid of immediately via medical massage, acupuncture, ear beads, reikii, biofeedback, or other modalities. Classes and free lectures are given regularly on various health disorders, including MS, Diabetes, lower back pain, face lift with acupuncture and microderm with mini-facial, asthma, high blood pressure, and food addiction (weight loss) research studies recruitment for private clients . For more information, please stop by or call (303) 800-4372.