YEAR OF THE WATER DRAGON
Ancestral traditions live on in Vancouver families.
When former Vancouver city councillor B. C. Lee was a young man living in Taiwan, his family had decided to spend the traditional Lunar New Year’s Eve dinner at the home of his elder brother in the south. His parents had already departed, and he was entrusted with locking up the house — a great responsibility. Lee carefully locked all the windows, but before stepping out the front door, he noticed a potential crisis: The rice barrel in the kitchen was empty. “How could my mother have forgotten!” he laughed.
A rice barrel left empty over New Year’s Eve would surely invite bad luck. It was an unthinkable oversight.
Although even a few grains in the bottom of the barrel would have been enough to avert disaster, Lee wasn’t going to take any chances.
“I panicked and ran out to the market and bought the biggest pack of rice I could find!”
The commitment to family and the rituals that ensure good fortune are all part of what mark Lunar New Year’s celebrations around the world, and here in Vancouver for this city’s multi- generational and varied Chinese and other Asian communities.
Typically the preparations begin a few days before Lunar New Year’s Eve, with a thorough cleaning of the house. New Year’s Eve is a day to pay respects to ancestors, bring in fresh flowers, decorate the house with red papers featuring good wishes, and gather the family for a feast, often featuring whole chickens and dumplings.
Over the next 15 days, until the traditional lantern festival that marks the end of the period, families visit each other, pay respects to in- laws, visit temples to pray for good fortune, light firecrackers and even, on the seventh day, celebrate the birthday of all humans, eating noodles for longevity.
Other customs include not sweeping on New Year’s Day to keep from sweeping good luck out of the house, and not cutting one’s hair until the 15 days have passed.
Although some of the customs may have changed, for many families of Chinese origin the excitement of the occasion — and the commitment to family reunification — remains.
“Here we don’t have the extended holidays, and the means of celebrating is different but the substance remains the same,” said Lee.
Celebrated around the globe, most significantly in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Mainland China, Macau, Indonesia and Thailand, the 15 days of Lunar New Year’s celebration are rooted in family.
As the local culture transforms some of the practical aspects of the occasion — it’s not a statutory holiday in Canada, for example — for families, the feeling of hope, love, gratitude and family is what matters.
New Year’s, which falls on Monday, Jan. 23, this year, is for feasting: whole chickens, an entire fish, dumplings, lotus root. Most importantly, it is for uniting.
“It’s a time of truce, when your elders are there, you don’t fight. You just look at the common good. The common values. What we share, not how different we are,” Lee explained.
Lee’s parents live in Vancouver now, as do a brother and sister. His elder brother still resides in Taiwan, so as Lee and his family sit down for the traditional New Year’s Eve meal here, they will turn on a webcam. His brother will rise from his bed in pyjamas half a world away and join the family to toast the Year of the Dragon with his tea.
Many local families who once spent New Year’s Day visiting from home to home in their cities and villages of origin, wishing “Gung hay fat choi” to all, will do the same by text message.
Seeing plenty of red
For Jennifer Hsu, who came to Canada from Taiwan in 1991 at the age of 30, almost everything about the holiday has changed except the sense of anticipation still uplifts her and brings the spark of excitement for good things to come.
“When I was little, it was the most exciting time of the year. It was also an excuse to get some money from my grandparents, new shoes and new clothes.”
With 26 cousins in Taiwan, the days leading up to and throughout the Chinese New Year celebrations crackled with happiness and anticipation.
“Three days before the New Year, we had the major cleaning.”
The children helped gladly: They knew they would be rewarded.
The new clothes and shoes had been purchased, folded neatly, waiting for them, but they could not be worn until New Year’s Day.
Most exciting, says Hsu, was the li see, red packets of money given to children by their elders, or from married family members to the unmarried.
Grocery shopping in the local market, done the morning of New Year’s Eve, was joyful pandemonium.
“People fighting to get their chicken and fish, to buy fresh flowers. It was chaos. Lineups.”
The New Year’s Eve tradition was to eat as if it were your last meal, she explains.
Then the story, which she now shares with her Canadian- born nieces, pours forth.
“A long time ago there was a beast that lived in the mountain area. He ate everything and everyone, and his name was Year. Eventually the villagers noticed he only came out once every 365 days to attack and pillage everyone.
“They also observed he was afraid of the colour red and the loud noise made by firecrackers. This beast was nocturnal. He didn’t come out in the day.
“So the tradition was that we don’t sleep on New Year’s Eve. We wear red to scare him away and hang red papers on the door so he won’t go in. The whole family gathers and has a big dinner. We say this dinner could be our last, so we might as well go wild.”
The next day, if you were still alive, you could say “Gung hay fat choi.” Congratulations! We survived!
“In Mandarin we say to spend the Chinese New Year, we need to pass the beast.”
The abundant feast table, the joyful red clothing, the firecrackers set off at midnight when the beast was drawing near, the resolve each year the children made to stay up all night ( never accomplished, but always valiantly attempted) and the pleasure of the red packets with money, carefully opened away from the elders’ eyes, so as not to appear impolite, and the visits with extended family — all conflicts set aside — are memories she treasures.
Time for self- refl ection
For Hsu today, the occasion has a deeper tenor. It is a time for self- reflection, a time for looking forward and for remembering. “I try to really appreciate how my parents felt,” she said.
Her father fled China in 1949, a refugee from the revolution.
On New Year’s Eve when she was a girl, between the breathless activity of going to market and dinner preparation, the arrival of family with li see was another ritual. Also, a quiet ritual at the altar to remember the ancestors.
“I remember watching my father cry when we did the ancestor worship. [ After leaving mainland China] he never got to see his family again. For me it is a time to really be grateful for having my family with me all these years.”
Although the shape of the family has changed with immigration to Canada, and the 26 cousins are spread out and far away, New Year’s Eve is still a time for a family dinner. And the worship of ancestors on New Year’s Eve.
Anna Bin, who emigrated from Guangzhou to Vancouver five years ago, recalls how hard her family worked to make sure they observed all the traditions when she was a child. “My mother could not afford to buy us new clothes,” she said. “So she tailor- made the clothes.”
Auspicious messages were hung around the house in bright red paper, faded papers from the year before removed.
“It was a much bigger deal then than it is now, even in China,” she said.
If she could relive one aspect of the annual tradition, she says it would be the dumplings. Friends, families, communities came together to prepare fillings and hand- wrap hundreds of dumplings. In kitchens warm with steam and filled with laughter, the children would play with the dough and misbehave.
Punishment was reserved during that time period because harsh words could be considered inauspicious.
“My grandparents would deep- fry the dumplings and wrap them in red paper and we would exchange them with other friends and family.”
Each bite of the dumpling brought exclamations: “These are the ones that auntie made, these are the ones that your cousin made.”
Without the extended family to gather and prepare, hundreds of homemade dumplings are an impossibility. “Now it’s just a hassle,” she said.
Even in China, she explained, the tradition of gathering from house to house to make dumplings together is breaking down. It’s cheaper and easier to buy them ready- made.
Rituals bring comfort
In Vancouver, where Lunar New Year is not a stat holiday ( an issue that is hotly debated in the Chinese community), it is almost impossible to observe the 15 days of rituals of what is the most important holiday of the year.
Bin makes the chicken for New Year’s Eve ( left whole to symbolize prosperity and togetherness). Her mother, who still lives in China, urges her to prepare a fish for the occasion.
“My mom keeps asking me to pan- fry a fish and keep it in the fridge for a week,” said Bin. “Fish, in Cantonese, sounds like abundance, or prosperity. The longer you keep it, the longer abundance will stay with you throughout the year.”
The li see, given by relatives to unmarried children, is a tradition that she upholds, though slightly adapted.
With her young daughters, Cindy, age 10, and Chloe, 4 ½ , she stuffs dozens of red envelopes with gold- wrapped chocolate coins for them to give out to their schoolmates.
They will have their New Year’s Eve dinner today, to coincide with the day her family in Guangzhou will be celebrating; they will be together, over Skype.
The rituals, even transformed and adapted, bring comfort, B. C. Lee said. “Humans need these rituals to pass on. The people who perform the ritual will be gone, but ritual lives on as a symbol of continuity.”