Happy Chinese New Year
A description of one of the world's leading festivals
Dear all
Happy New Year, or “gong hei fat choy” as they say in Hong Kong. (“Gong xi fa cai” is the Mandarin version of the expression, which literally means “wishing you great happiness and prosperity”.)
This weekend 1.4 billion people in China, and tens of millions of more around the world, will be celebrating Lunar New Year, and welcoming in the Year of the Ox.
As with many festivals, the origins of Chinese New Year - or “CNY” as most abbreviate it - are somewhat shrouded by time. According to legend, there was once a monster named Nian (年, which literally means “year” in Mandarin), who possessed a long head and sharp horns. The creature dwelled deep in the sea all year round, and only showed up on New Year’s Eve to eat people and livestock in nearby villages.
Rather than endure the terror, the villagers would escape to the mountains each New Year, until one day an old white-haired man turned up determined to defeat the beast. Refusing to flee like the others, he successfully scared away Nian by lighting candles in the houses, wearing red clothes, and burning bamboo to make a loud cracking sound, a precursor to modern firecrackers.
The historical story is, sadly, a lot less exciting. It appears that during the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC) winter sacrifices were already a feature at this time of year. It wasn’t however until the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) that the CNY date was fixed, and its associated traditions started to coalesce.
These traditions today include fireworks, visits to the temple, festive treats, family meals, clearing out last year’s clutter. Then there are the lively dragon dances, performed all over by troops of young men banging drums, gongs, and cymbals - to the detriment of everyone’s hearing.
Instead of giving presents in the form of material goods, the custom at CNY is the handing out of red packets of cash, known as lai see in Hong Kong, and hong bao elsewhere in China. There are strict rules about who gives to who, and how much. The trouble is, as a foreigner these rules seem to depend on who you ask, and so I’m not even going to attempt to give a list here. The good news is that it’s not the done thing (for most) to open the packets before the end of New Year, and so hopefully any mistakes will be lost in the mix.
CNY today has morphed into a juggernaut of a festival, taking over the whole country in ethnically Chinese dominated regions and nations. Old China Hands (Brits living long-term in Hong Kong or China) tell me that up until the 1980s or so, the only things open in Hong Kong during CNY were a few expat bars, and so there was always a pre-festival rush to stock up on the basics (like food). In China today it is a week-long holiday and the country more or less shuts down.
What the festival is also known for is travel. Chunyun (the 40 days surrounding CNY) is regarded as the world’s biggest human migration. It is a long-held tradition for most Chinese people to reunite with their families at this time, returning home from their far-off places of work or study to enjoy dinner together on New Year’s Eve.
The resulting travel is of a heady scale. Some 3 billion trips are expected to be made during this New Year period in China, of which the most (2.4 billion) will be by car. 79 million will be by air, 45 million by sea, and 440 million are expected to be by train – taking advantage of the 4,000 km of new track built in 2020 alone, half of which was for high-speed trains. This is more than double France’s entire high-speed network.
The eagle eyed among you will have noticed that these figures are for this year. Whether or not you believe that Covid is under control in China is beside the point: the government want it to be safe to travel, and so it is safe to travel. They may have a point. In a paper written last year in the journal Science, the authors stated that the travel quarantine introduced in Wuhan on 23 January 2020 only delayed the epidemic’s progression by three to five days, although international travel restrictions did delay the cross-border spread until mid-February. In other words, travel restrictions within China don’t have much of an impact in controlling the virus’s spread (but international controls do – take note, Western governments).
Because there are so many Chinese people living around the world, there is a lot of international travel involved. Indeed, they make up the world’s largest diaspora, with some estimates putting the number of ethnic Chinese outside of China proper at up to 50 million. With such a large number of people, it is of course the case that variances in CNY tradition will emerge.
One of the more fun traditions of CNY here in Singapore is what’s called lo-hei– or “prosperity fish toss” as it is also known. It usually consists of strips of raw fish (sushi salmon is very popular, although this year we just use normal smoked salmon, no doubt to the displeasure of many) mixed with shredded vegetables like radish, cucumber, and carrot, as well as a variety of sauces and condiments such as sesame oil, plum sauce, and crushed peanuts.
The family or friends gather round a wide, flat dish each holding a pair of chopsticks. As the ingredients are added in turn, each is accompanied by a few words beseeching the heavens for prosperity of some kind. Once all the ingredients have been placed on the dish, the assembled throng dip into the food with their chopsticks and give it a hearty and good-natured toss. Then everyone digs in.
Chinese New Year is great fun, even looking at it from the periphery. With China’s influence growing around the world, it will be interesting to see whether CNY becomes ingrained in non-Chinese cultures too. I note that the British newspapers this year are full of tips on how celebrate the festival and what to say, and Boris Johnson even sent out a New Year message. He did, however, use the Cantonese rather than the Mandarin version of the greeting, something that Beijing will have been quick to note. It seems that even at this family-orientated time of year politics is impossible to avoid.