Chinese New Year by Eileen (April 15, 2013)

Chinese New Year (CNY) is a fantastic holiday, that exceeds Christmas in its scale and festivities.  This year it started on February 10th and it lasts for 15 days.  The first day, last day, and the weekend in between are the biggest celebration days.  On the 9th day is the Hokkien day of celebration (this year - February 18th).  Hokkiens are a group of people who came in history as traders and merchants from south-east China, and it is also the name of the language that they speak.  There are lots of fireworks and firecrackers (illegal but given a blind eye) which you can easily buy many places including outside the local fruit and vegetable market or places equivalent to the local corner store.  The first night Garth and I were woken up about midnight by the extended sound of fireworks going off in our neighbourhood - it sounded like right outside our home.  These fireworks signal the start of Chinese New Year.  Even though I was told to expect them, they took me aback because it was so close by and it sounded to me like they were going off inside metal garbage dumpsters or something like that.  First thing I did when I woke up that morning was to look out our window to see if there was any damage to houses or vehicles.  There was none.  These fireworks have gone off about every second or third evening, including outside my classroom window.

The Dragon Dance is another traditional aspect of CNY.  It can be scary for young children and Elizabeth was at first a bit scared, but now after seeing about 4 of them, not so much.  There are two people dressed in the costume - the front person who supports what looks like a very heavy mask, and the back end person who has to bend down while walking around.  Neither one sounds very fun to me!  The dragons are accompanied by very loud drumming by men wearing similar-looking shirts.  The front end person gets to "spit" out oranges though and also collect the red money envelopes that hang up at the houses or businesses that the dragon is invited to visit.   There are even brightly decorated trucks that carry the costume and drummers and others from place to place.  Friends of ours here had these Mandarin oranges kind of thrown at them from the dragon's mouth.  They are called "prosperity oranges" for a prosperous new year.  Red is the colour of prosperity and it seems that prosperity is the "theme" for CNY.  

We will have wished people at church (where we see the most Chinese people) 'Happy New Year' three times by the time this festival is over - 3 Sundays.  

The two weeks or so before and at the start of CNY there are many special things for sale at the local market that are not usually there - more ladies' clothes, kitchen stuff (eg containers, pots), and lots of special food treats that I have not seen before.  The market was extra busy too.  This last week in the middle of CNY there was not the same quantity of products or busyness.