(This is the edited text of a public lecture delivered at the celebration of Chinese New Year and Spring Festival 2022 at the University of Guyana. Kuo Li is the Chinese Director of the Confucius Institute on the Turkeyen Campus of the university.)
Dear Audience,
This is Adam Kuo Li from the Confucius Institute at the University of Guyana. Now let me briefly introduce you to the Chinese New Year, Spring Festival, also known as Chunjie. It is called Spring Festival literally from Chinese word Chun（春）which means spring. Actually the spring season will come very soon after these festive celebration days and everything in nature will come back to life from the cold frozen winter environment in northern areas of the world. People celebrate Spring Festival on January 1st in the Chinese Lunar calendar. If you pay attention to the calendar used in China you will notice we have two number systems for days, one for the Gregorian calendar using numeric numbers and one for the Chinese Lunar calendar using Chinese numbers. 2022 is the Tiger Year from the Chinese Zodiac. This year the Spring Festival is February 1, on the Gregorian calendar, last year it was February 12, and next year it will be January 22. But it will always be the first day of the first month on the Chinese Lunar calendar.
Now let’s see the origin of the festival with the story of Nian (年). As one legend goes, Nian is a hideous beast which is believed to feast on human flesh on New Year’s Day. Because Nian feared the colour red, loud noises and fire, red paper decorations were pasted on doors, lanterns were burned all night, and firecrackers were lit to frighten the beast away.
Our next story is the legend of 12 zodiac animals. Long ago, in China, the Jade Emperor decided there should be a way of measuring time. On his birthday he told the animals that there was to be a swimming race. The first 12 animals across the fast flowing river would be the winners and they would each have a year of the zodiac named after them. After the race, Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig were each nominated for a year of the zodiac. The zodiac repeats in the same order every 12 years.
In daily life, people tend to ask their zodiac for age instead of a number. So you can refer to the chart here for your zodiac. Once you have your zodiac you can say, for example, “wo shu long (龙)”, which means I belong to dragon year.
Also, the zodiac is related to people’s personality traits. For example, people who were born in the Tiger year tend to be authoritative, self-possessed, have strong leadership qualities, are charming, ambitious, courageous, and warm-hearted. If you or your family members were born in the Tiger year, don’t you think these words match perfectly?
Now let us come to the celebration in reality. Usually people will start preparing for this festival a week before by worshipping the Kitchen God, who is said to go up to heaven and report the performance and achievements of the family for the year. People in the household will serve some sweets as sacrifice in order for Kitchen God to say something sweet in his report. And starting from this day, people will clean the house thoroughly, throw out old useless items and buy something new for the New Year. Of course they will also shop for a lot of delicious food in order to entertain the guests and relatives during the festival days.
On New Year’s Eve, which is the last day of the old year, people from each household will rise as early as possible to paste red couplets on gates and doors in and out of the house. Red lanterns will be hung up high and lit throughout the night. Meanwhile Chinese calligraphy character Fu (福), which means “blessings”, will also be pasted on doors and walls. Some people like to have it pasted up-side-down. Because when the word is reversed in the Chinese language it has the same sound as the word for “arriving”. So it sounds like your blessings have arrived.
The New Year’s Eve feast is a must for every household. No matter how far a person is away from home, he/she will always manage to get home to attend this family reunion feast. Because of its large population, China always experiences the largest migration in the world during this holiday season. At this reunion time extended family members will stay in one household together and enjoy delicious hometown nostalgic food, watch New Year celebration Gala (also called Chunwan) on TV and wait for the New Year to come among the sounds of firecrackers from all directions.
For the feast, there are some dishes that cannot be omitted from the menu. The first one is fish. Even though people from different areas of China cook fish in different ways, they will always put fish on this New Year’s Eve dinner table. Because “fish ” shares the same sound (yu) with another word which means “surplus”. Everyone is hoping they will have more food or money than necessary and never encounter deficit or debt.
Another food is dumplings enjoyed by people in northern China. Its Chinese sound (jiaozi) is the same as that of “money” in old time China. Before paper bills came into being, Chinese people used to use silver blocks or gold blocks as money. Now look at the dumplings on the plates. They do resemble silver blocks, don’t they?
People in southern China tend to enjoy sticky rice cake at this feast. Its Chinese sound (nian gao) has the homophonous meaning of promotion/progress, and it sounds like “year year” up in career.
Children will feel very happy on this eve. Besides delicious food, they will also receive a red package with money inside from older family members like grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts. The money is called “age lucky money”, and the child will be one year older after midnight. Chinese people also have a separate age counting system, for example, I personally will get one year older on Chinese New Year’s Day.
On New Year’s Day, people will also get up as early as possible. They dress up in new festive red clothes and travel around to visit their relatives and neighbours to extend their New Year greetings. They will also bring New Year gifts to each other and kids will get more red packages at this moment. When people meet for the first time in the New Year, they tend to say “Guo nian hao” (Happy New Year), “Gong Xi Fa Cai” (wish you prosperity and wealth), “Hu Nian Da Ji” (good luck in Tiger Year) and “Hu Hu Sheng Wei” (Be strong and brave as tiger) to each other. Of course more delicious food will be enjoyed during the festive day.
This is a week-long national holiday. But festive activities will last about two weeks, till another holiday, the Lantern Festival on the Chinese lunar calendar.
