Like the Chinese, the Vietnamese also welcome their lunar new year (tet) by cleaning the house and settling any outstanding debts.  Many decorate their homes with peach blossoms if they are from the north or apricot blossoms if they are from the south.  Pots of cone-shaped two to three feet tall kumquat trees are carefully selected and displayed prominently in the house.   These trees symbolize the many generations in a family such that the fruits represent the grandparents, the flowers are the parents, the buds are the children, and the light green leaves are the grandchildren.  To pay homage to ancestors and to demonstrate gratitude, a tray with five different candied-fruits is placed on the ancestral altar in the house.

For good luck, the Vietnamese customarily eat  a square cake made of glutinous rice, mung beans, and pork (banh chung) and a concoction of pickled radishes, peppers, and other vegetables called dua mon. They also visit friends and relatives during the official three-day festivity as they wine and dine to catch up with each another.  Similar to the Chinese custom, small children in Vietnam also receive lucky money in a red envelop from their elders.  Although the Vietnamese Government banned firecrackers several years ago, the revelry of Lunar New Year celebration remains, typically for seven days.

Coming from a culture where ancestors and elders play an integral part in traditions, many Asians in the U.S. continue to pay respect to their ancestors and elders on New Year’s  Day.  As for the community, the China Towns in large cosmopolitan areas such as San Francisco or New York City historically offer various types of celebrations highlighted by parades, lion dances, or even a 112-foot long dragon dancing to the beats of drums and gongs.  Smaller Asian communities throughout the country may organize entertainments that include the demonstration of one or more of the five Chinese traditional arts—music, chess, caligraphy, painting, and martial arts.  If you are interested to get a taste of the lunar new year festivity, be sure to check your local Chinese cultural center.  It is something that you will not want to miss!

To the northeast of China, Lunar New Year celebrations in Korea are generally similar.  Early in the morning of New Year’s Day (soellal in Korean,) each family hangs a bok-jo-ri—a strainer made of straw—on the wall, in hope of scooping up many blessings for the family.   Everyone, particularly little children, dresses in traditional solbim that is made of fabrics with five festive colors—red, blue, white, green, and gold.  The younger generation perform a memorial rite of bowing called charye to honor their ancestors and sebae to wish their elders good health and longevitiy.

The Koreans also consider the new year as a time to add one’s age, although they do so on the first day.  Everyone customarily eats a bowl of rice cake soup (tt?kkuk) and drinks some rice punch (shikyhe.)   After this ritual and throughout the next 15 days, family members and friends visit one another and reconnect over food, drinks, and games.  On daeborum–the 15^th of January as well as the first full moon of the year–everyone eats a certain number of peanuts, chestnuts or walnuts that is equivalent to his/her age.  The belief is to celebrate one’s life as well as to stay healthy in the coming year.  A  commonly prepared dish eaten on the day of daeborum is glutinous rice cooked with millet, red beans, sorghum and large beans called okokhap.  Believed to protect one’s health throughout the year, it is usually eaten with nine different types of vegetables dried in the previous autumn.

New Year time is game time in Korea. Unlike many U.S. Americans who would enjoy watch NFL, Koreans of all generations actually participate in both indoor and outdoor games.  Men and boys fly kites while women and girls jump on see-saw like boards called neol-ttwigi. Other popular games are yut-nori (a board game), gonginolei–a fun game that uses five gonggi, and spinning paengi.

Similar to their Chinese neighbors, Koreans also travel back to their hometown for the joyous celebration as well as to pay respect to their parents and ancestors.  Next week we will visit Vietnam located to the southwest of China.

Notwithstanding the regional differences that exist in customs and traditions throughout China, the level of new year festivity there is comparable to that of Christmas in the U.S.  In general, houses are decorated in the celebrative red and gold rather than the Christmas red and green.  They are also adorned with peach blossoms and narcissus—symbols of longevity and prosperity respectively–instead of the Christmas tree and poinsettias.  Fruits like oranges, kumquat and pomelos complement the new year décor because they signify wealth and fortune.  Finally, spring couplets of  black caligraphy on vertical red paper are hung on entry gates and on walls throughout the house to express well wishes for good health and boundless fortune.

New Year, or more appropriately called Spring Festival (Chun Jié), is a time for family reunions and the New Year Eve’s dinner is especially sumptuous.  While a portion for every living member of the family is accounted for when preparing rice, his/her individual place setting is also kept vacant if absent.  Everyone stays up late to welcome the New Year, hoping to bring health and longevity to their elders.  At midnight, firecrackers are set off to chase away the evil spirits of the outgoing year.  Children bow to pay respect to their parents and elders.  In return, they receive “lucky money” in red envelopes (húngbao in Mandarin Chinese).  Elders also receive lucky money from their grown children, symbolizing well wishes for health and longevity.   In a way, this is like the Christmas gift exchange in Western culture.

For the Chinese, the new year is also a time to turn over a new leaf.  To prepare for it, houses are cleaned with every corner swept, debts paid, and disputes resolved.  On New Year’s Day, new clothes (including underwear) and new shoes are worn.  After paying homage to ancestors and reverance to the gods, the younger members of the family also pay respect to their living parents and elders.  For the first meal of the year, many Chinese eat steamed glutinous rice cake (nián gao) or steamed turnip cake (luó bo gao) while others solely consume vegetables.  In Mainland China, stores and restaurants are generally closed for seven days straight.   Many return to their home town to visit  families and relatives, primarily to exchange well wishes like gong xi fa cái.  The seventh day of the new year is traditionally everyone’s birthday (rén rí.)  Hence, one would add one year to his/her age on this special day.  The entire new year celebration ends on the 15^th of the first month called the Laterns Festival (yuán shao) when many communities hold lantern competitions.  At the end of the competition, the elders get to take home a latern.  Therefore, the more lanterns one has collected over the years,  the more blessings one has in terms of longevity.

Sounds like a huge festivity, isn’t it?

January 23^rd 2012 is the first day of the Year of the Dragon, according to Chinese astrology and lunar calendar.  To the Chinese, Koreans, and Vietnamese, Lunar New Year is the most important festival of the year.  Other Asian nationals may join the festivity in their neighborhoods even though they observe their owe new year days.  For example, the Thais honor their Songkran (Water Festival) in April or the Gujaratis celebrate theirs the day before the Indian Diwali (the Festival of Lights) in late October or early November.  As for the Japanese and Filipinos, they choose to observe the Gregorian New Year.  If you are surprised that not all Asians celebrate Lunar New Year, you are not alone.  Stay tuned and please return next week to find out how the Chinese celebrate their Lunar New Year.  But before you leave, please share with our readers how you celebrate Lunar New Year, if you do.

The ritual of receiving gift in the United States generally goes like this: when we receive a gift, we thank the gift-giver, ask permission to open it, open it, and thank the giver again.  This is not the case in other cultures, especially for foreign-born Chinese.  Read the following situation and let me know what you think?

Your friend threw a birthday party for his father’s 71st birthday.  While your friend is a native-born Chinese American, his father is from Guangzhou, the People’s Republic of China.   You purchased a very exquisite clock as present.  Upon arrival, you congratulated your friend’s father and hand him the gift.  He thanked you and put the gift aside.  You were puzzled because neither did he ask to open it, nor opened it right away.   The celebration was extremely festive with dragon dance and lots of singing and toasting.  Yet there was no “gift-opening” in the program.   As the party ended, you wondered to yourself, “well, may be the father has forgotten about the presents.”

Lots to think about…

But this time, their identities were replaced.

A recent Citi credit card commercial shows three non-Asian men launched a balloon with a camera tied to its end.  The camera was to take pictures of the earth from above. Like many typical commercials, it is less than 60 seconds long and to sell an idea–that Citi credit card is convenient for purchase.

What consumers may not be aware of is that two of the three men in the ad were actually Chinese Americans students from MIT.  Two years ago, Oliver Yeh and Justin Lee did a science project and made international news. Their inexpensive project was published by the Guardian in U.K.

There is nothing wrong with Citi’s advertisement to market its credit card, but when Citi replaced the Asian men who own the original idea with White men, what is Citi saying?

Let me know what you think?

Can we assume one’s ancestry by his or her last name?  Let me know what you think.

Is there an Asian language? An Asian culture?

What do you think?

Is this a myth?  Or a curse?  Are they really doing well?

What do you think?

What do you think?