Calgary Herald
Many Chinese Canadians in Alberta have been busy cleaning their homes or calling in the maid service in the past few days.
Others were out shopping for bags of glittery material, rolls of orange and red cloth, and colourful banners with poetic couplets extolling good fortune and health for all.
It's about practising the traditions surrounding the biggest Chinese cultural festival of the year, Chinese New Year, a celebration that many see as important in keeping their culture alive in the New World.
This year, New Year's Eve falls on Saturday, and the first day of the Year of the Dog is Sunday.
"Most people believe and still carry on the traditions and the customs. Chinese New Year is the biggest, most popular celebration among the holidays of the year," says Julie Zhu, a 42-year-old teacher in the Chinese/English bilingual program at Meyohohk Elementary School in Edmonton.
Herbert Chiu, 48, came to Canada from Hong Kong in 1974. Not very many Chinese Canadians ignore new year celebrations because it is a day of family reunions, cultural celebration and reverence for ancestors, Chiu says.
"I do not want to forget about my traditions and where I came from," he says.
While food is important, there's more to it than stocking up on ginko nuts, oranges and lotus seeds.
The lead-up to the festivities often means a rigorous house cleaning, followed by decorating with poetic words and symbols of good fortune, including bright red and orange banners for wealth and happiness.
Cleaning up the house must be done just right.
You must sweep up at the right time, before New Year's Day, or good fortune will be swept away, according to the University of Victoria web page on the topic.
The B.C. university says the way house cleaning is done is important to keep good luck and chase away the bad.
It means no cleaning on New Year's Day. Afterwards, floors may be swept to the middle of the room, then placed in the corners and not taken out until the fifth day. The dirt must never be trampled upon, and if you sweep it over the threshold, you will sweep one of the family away.
Zhu believes in practising the traditions.
She cleans house before New Year's Eve. "I start one week before. . . . I try to avoid doing things that are considered bad luck," she says.
She decorates her house with red and gold signs and phrases saying Happy New Year, good fortune and safe wishes.
She hangs a banner of a Chinese character for good fortune upside down, because upside down, the character is the word for arriving. "So it means good fortune arriving," she explains.
The practice of laisee or lucky money is also popular. Elders and married people stuff red bags and envelopes with money to give to the young when they come to visit on New Year's Day.
Sometimes the young must formally kowtow to their elders to receive laisee, says Hua Lin, who is a professor of linguistics and Asian Pacific studies at the University of Victoria.
A couple of years ago, her daughter was asked to kowtow at a friend's New Year's party, Lin recalls.
"Kowtow is you kneel on both knees and put your forehead on the floor, just like the Muslims when they put both hands on the floor.
"It's a mark of respect, total respect. But it's a tradition now, it's like a symbolic thing," she says.
Chiu says he gives his 14-year-old and his 20-year-old about $100 each, but the amount varies according to each family's financial situation.
Although most Chinese give $20 or $50, it could be as little as $1 to as much as $100 or $1,000, he says.
Firecrackers are important because the explosions scare away bad luck and good fortune comes in, he says.
New Year's Eve, many Chinese will be shopping for fresh flowers because tradition says if flowers bloom on New Year's Day, it will be a prosperous year, says Chiu.
The kumquat plant is a favourite because the Chinese word sounds the same as the words for gold and good luck, but narcissus, peonies and chrysanthemums are also favourites.
Lin will be going to a number of parties at friends' places and hosting some at her own home. There's plenty of food and sometimes there will be performances of dances, songs and karaoke, she says.
Wenran Jiang is acting director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta and a political science professor. Jiang says he celebrates a diluted form of Chinese New Year's, thanks in part to being raised on the mainland, where practices were suppressed, and also because in Canada there are no official Chinese New Year holidays.
But wherever they are, Chinese New Year traditions are primarily about visiting elderly relatives, friends and co-workers and socializing.
"You receive visitors and you visit others," says Jiang, who is anxious to pass along the traditions to his children.
There's another great thing about Chinese New Year, Jiang says.
It's something to look forward to after Christmas, when many Canadians have little to celebrate, except more than a month of dreary, dark winter days before Valentine's Day rolls around.
"I feel warm and happy to have another family gathering after Christmas," he says.
Cycles of the Moon
- The Chinese lunar New Year is the longest chronological record in history, dating from 2600 BC, when the Emperor Huang Ti introduced the first cycle of the zodiac.
- Like the western calendar, the Chinese lunar calendar is a yearly one, with the start of the lunar year being based on the cycles of the moon. Therefore, because of this cyclical dating, the beginning of the year can fall anywhere between late January and the middle of February.
- A complete cycle takes 60 years and is made up of five cycles of 12 years each.
- The Chinese lunar calendar names each of the 12 years after an animal.
- Legend has it that the Lord Buddha summoned all the animals to come to him before he departed from earth. Only 12 came to bid him farewell and he named a year after each one in the order they arrived.
- Some Chinese believe the animal ruling the year in which a person is born has a profound influence on personality, saying: "This is the animal that hides in your heart."
- New year 2006 is Jan. 29; new year 2007 is Feb. 18.
- There are 100,000 people of Chinese origin in Alberta, according to the 2001 census.
Source: 2001census data, new-year.co.uk/chinese/calendar.htm
This story features a factbox "Cycles of the moon".