Bringing In The New Year

Chinese New Year lasts a whole month. Families pick a day within the new year month to gather and formally ring in the new year together. Our family gathered at Bro's today.

When we meet, we are supposed to wear new clothes for the day, but we've abandoned this practice. It's no longer special to wear a new outfit when we acquire new clothing year round these days. But we still exchange new year wishes, give each other special new year food, play mah jong, and share a big meal. As if we really need an excuse to eat a big meal together.

The most common new year's greeting is Gong hai fat choy - May prosperity be yours. Other greetings including wishing each other a healthy and ailment-free year, safety going in and out of the house, smooth sailing in business, and simply a happy new year.

I can't say that I like new year food. They are often not tasty. The food items are chosen because they are homophones of lucky terms or phrases in Chinese or because they are symbolic of desirable things in life. Different regions in China may have different new year food because they speak different dialects.

For example, tangerines or kumquats (literally gold luck) are popular, because they are brightly coloured like red (a good luck colour), come with leaves (a sign of fertility), and look like ingots of gold (which means prosperity). But ox tongue is also popular, because tongue sounds like the word smooth in Cantonese. There are also nuts, seeds, and sugared dried fruit that show up around new year because of the eponymous good fortune they bring.

The one food I regret we no longer make are deep fried pastries filled with crushed peanuts and sugar. They are labour-intensive to make. I remember long ago, mom, granny, and their friends sometimes gathering for a day just to make them. I helped by rolling out the dough or putting filling in the pastry and nipping the edges with water to ensure they don't come apart during deep frying. They are crescent shaped, like gold nuggets in ancient China, deep fried to a crisp golden brown, and filled with crunchy sweetness. See why it's a new year favourite? I have extracted a promise from mom to make them with me this month.

Married couples give children and single adults lai see - lucky money in red envelopes. There is a whole protocol involved in the giving of lai see. When I was young, mom's and dad's friends used to say to me, It's candy money, when they gave me lai see. As a young adult, that changed to, It's beer money. Since I married, I have not received lai see from anyone but my parents and grandmother. You always give to your children whether they are married or not. At some juncture in life, adult children start to give lai see to their elders as a sign of respect.

You invoke luck by giving lai see, the recipient receives luck by accepting lai see. I made sure I gave out lots of lai see this year and accepted one from mom. I even had the gall to ask Aunt for a lai see. She didn't give me one because the lai see protocol doesn't allow her to give me one. But sometimes, you still have to ask good fortune to come your way, I say.