The Lunar New Year

Monday, January 26th was the first day of the Chinese New Year. It’s the year of the ox, and given that the Chinese lunar calendar is a twelve year cycle of twelve animals, anyone who turns 12, 24 (like me), 36, 48... years old this year was born in the year of the ox. I also happen to be a Taurus, so I’m more or less the same animal according to the monthly zodiac calendar and the yearly Chinese lunar calendar.

I was invited out for lunch by a parent I know through school and ate at a nice Sichuan restaurant with two families. Sichuan cuisine is one of my favorites so the food was really good. They bought two bottles of alcohol; the grandfather sipped on one and the other was a bottle of brandy that the two fathers drank, only they were both driving, so they kept refilling my glass and I ended up drinking most of the brandy. It hit me later that afternoon and I had to take a long nap.

I went to a friend’s house for dinner and had a lot more excellent food. Everyone does the same thing on New Year’s Eve – hang out at home with the whole family, cook, eat, watch holiday specials on TV, and set off fireworks. One food that is commonly eaten is fish, because the word for fish – “yu” 鱼 – is the same pronunciation as another word – 余 – that means surplus or extra. Eating fish means you’ll have a surplus of wealth and prosperity in the new year (the most common superstition derived from a homonym is the number four 四, which is pronounced the same as the word “to die” 死, so it’s considered a very unluckly number).

So I ate fish and a lot of other good food, drank, and watched the holiday specials, which I missed last year. We watched some on TV and then retreated to a warm bedroom and watched more online, mostly comedy skits and music performances. We later set of fireworks and then the city erupted at around 11:50 pm as seemingly every house set off fireworks outside. The amateur pyrotechnics continued for nearly an hour and then started up again soon after sunrise the following morning.

I posted some pictures on flickr.