Chinese New Year - day by day
The Chinese New Year starts on the first day of the new year containing a new moon and ends on the Lantern Festival fourteen days later.
The first day of the Chinese New Year is for the welcoming of the deities of the heavens and earth. You will find that many people abstain from meat consumption on the first day because it is believed that this will ensure longevity for them. This is especially true of Buddhists. All food to be consumed is cooked the day before as some consider lighting fires and using knives to be bad luck on New Year’s Day.
The first day of Chinese New Year is marked as a time when families visit the oldest and most senior members of their extended family, typically the parents, grandparents or great-grandparents.
Some families may invite a lion dance troupe as a symbolic ritual to usher in the Lunar New Year as well as to evict bad spirits from the premises. Members of the family who are married also give red packets containing cash to junior members of the family, mostly children and teenagers.
Day two of the Chinese New Year is reserved for married daughters to visit their birth parents. Traditionally, daughters who have been married may not have the opportunity to visit their birth families frequently. On the second day, the Chinese pray to their ancestors as well as to all the gods. They are extra kind to dogs and feed them well as it is believed that the second day is the birthday of all dogs.
Business people of the Cantonese dialect group will hold a ‘Hoi Nin’ prayer to start their business on the 2nd day of Chinese New Year. The prayer is done to pray that they’ll be blessed with good luck and prosperity in their business for the year.
The third and fourth day of the Chinese New Year are generally accepted as inappropriate days to visit relatives and friends. This is typically for one or both of the following reasons:
1) It is known as “chì kÇ’u” (赤å£), which means that it is easy to get into arguments. It has been suggested that the cause of this could be due in part to the fried food and visiting during the first two days of the New Year celebration.
2) Families who had an immediate relative that has died in the past three years will not go house-visiting as a form of respect to the dead. The third day of the New Year is allocated to grave-visiting instead. As a result, there are some people conclude it is inauspicious to do any house visiting at all.
On the fifth day you will find most people in northern China eating dumplings on the morning of Po Wu (ç ´äº”). The fifth day is also the birthday of the Chinese god of wealth. In Taiwan, you will find that businesses traditionally re-open on this day, which is accompanied by firecrackers.
The seventh day is traditionally known as renri, which means the common man’s birthday. This is reserved as the day when everyone grows one year older. It is also known as the day when tossed raw fish salad, yusheng, is eaten. This is a custom primarily among the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, such as Malaysia and Singapore. People get together to toss the colorful salad and make wishes for continued wealth and prosperity. And for many Chinese Buddhists, this is another day to avoid meat.
Day nine of the New Year is a day for Chinese to offer prayers to the Jade Emperor of Heaven in the Taoist Pantheon. The ninth day is traditionally known and celebrated as the birthday of the Jade Emperor. This day holds significant importance to Hokkiens and Teochews. On midnight of the eighth day of the new year, the Hokkiens will offer thanks by prayer to the Emperor of Heaven. The offerings will include sugarcane as it was the sugarcane that had protected the Hokkiens from certain extermination generations ago. Note that tea is what is served as a customary protocol for paying respect to an honored person.
The fifteenth day of the new year is celebrated as YuánxiÄo jié , which is also known as Chap Goh Mei in Fujian dialect. Rice dumplings Tangyuan, which is just a sweet glutinous rice ball brewed in a soup, is eaten this day. You will notice that candles are lit outside houses as well as a way to guide wayward spirits home. This is the day that is celebrated as the Lantern Festival. For that reason, you will see families walking the streets carrying lighted lanterns. And this is the day that marks the end of the Chinese New Year festivities.
Leave a Comment