Tomorrow is New Year's eve on the Chinese Lunar calendar. I've been reading about the traditions, celebrations and superstitions for months and I'm feeling a lot of excitement looking ahead to the new year. Until this year I didn't fully appreciate that this time of year is like Christmas and New Year's wrapped up into a two-week festival. The more I learn about the celebrations, the more beautiful and interesting I find this tradition. I've been working hard this past month to thoroughly clean our house, in the Chinese tradition (it is believed that if you sweep during new year you sweep out all the wealth for the year). My favorite tradition is that parents must refrain from scolding kids, because children are not to cry during the New Year. Part of me wonders if that is part of the reason why adoptions are held up around Spring Festival in China.
My projects are nearly complete and I think if I spend the rest of the day working our house will be in order to greet the Year of the Pig.
Molly and I have been shopping, as well, so there will be traditional foods for New Year's - lychee for close family ties, tangerines for luck, peanuts for long life, long noodles for long life, coconut and lettuce. I'm planning to make dumplings to eat on Sunday.
I remember eating dumplings one New Year's with two UMASS exchange students from China, Yi-Ying and Ming, who spent several holidays with our family and were always very kind and generous with me as a child. The girls giggled about how they had been up all night the night before working on the dumplings, and I was too young to understand that is the tradition in China, they stay up all night to greet the new year, just the way we do, and they make the dumplings as a family, gathered together in the kitchen. Yi-Ying and Ming had formed a little family for themselves in the states, and it was a great honor for us to be included in their holiday celebration. I still remember how delicious the dumplings were, and how many they had made! They covered every surface in the tiny kitchen of their apartment - enough to eat for two weeks. I want to honor those two young women, far from home at the most important time of year for family togetherness, by keeping this tradition for my daughter.
We've looked unsuccessfully for a couplet for the door, but we've sent New Year greeting cards to our closest friends and family members. We've even tucked crisp bills into red envelopes for the children we know who will be celebrating.
Saturday there is a celebration in Ankeny organized by the Chinese Cultural Association of Iowa. I'm looking forward to seeing Molly's reaction to traditional foods, music and costumes. It feels really special to me, to be able to experience this with her, knowing that this might be the first Spring Festival that she remembers. I hope it lays a framework for future years that will offer her some connection to her history.
Sun nien fai lok,
C
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