It was going to be the Year of The Rat, not that you could tell – most showed very cute little mice and Disney must have been doing their nut as Mickey was plagiarised EVERYWHERE. Pine trees were replaced with orange bushes bearing fruit (well, satsuma sized oranges anyway) and fake or real plum (?branches with small pink, purple or white) blossom trees.
Nice plum blossom tree & coins. That's a rat??? Chinese New year decorations, Hong Kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
Lucky money was displayed everywhere, lai-see envelopes (Red packets of money – often new notes in lucky amounts - given to children/ unmarried by the married and elders)
were handed out (empty!) with most purchases, and hung as decorations too. Officially it starts on the 1st of the 1st Lunar month of the Chinese calendar, and ends with the Lantern festival on the 15th, but many places seems to stay shut from New Years onwards! So it was the start of Feb this year.
According to legends, Chinese New Years started with the fight against a beast called the "Year" in Chinese. It ate villagers! They persuaded a great lion spirit to help, which wounded and drove away the beast. The next year the lion was protecting the Emperor's palace so defenceless people built a statue resembling it, using bamboo and cloth, which again scared off the monster and started the lion costumes off.
One day I had gone grocery shopping in Aberdeen and noticed a huge crowd gathering in the main square. A troupe of dancers was just starting, and as I was fairly tall for the audience I got a great view! I’d seen dragon dances in the UK, with the people under the costume snaking along the streets, but this was a lion dance.
Lion Dance dancers performing acrobatics for Chinese New Year on a set of stilts, Aberdeen Hong Kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
Lion Dance dancers performing acrobatics for Chinese New Year on a set of stilts, Aberdeen Hong Kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
They had their own drummers so it was a great racket.
After a rhythmic dance with a lot of the guys under the costume, they left just 2 in it, front and back, who then climbed onto a series of poles well over 6 feet above the ground which the rest of the group steadied for them.
Lion Dance dancers performing acrobatics for Chinese New Year on a set of stilts, Aberdeen Hong Kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
Lion Dance dancers performing acrobatics for Chinese New Year on a set of stilts, Aberdeen Hong Kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
They then did the most amazing acrobatics for a good 10 minutes, leaping from 1 pair of poles to others, all the time keeping up a brilliantly life-like lion act. It blinked and wagged its tail, washed itself, batted its eyelashes, pounced like a cat – it was really fantastic!
Lion Dance dancers performing acrobatics for Chinese New Year on a set of stilts, Aberdeen Hong Kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
The finale was it spitting as banner (saying happy New Year, I expect), sweets and multicoloured short spirals of confetti onto the crowd. After they climbed down they toured the edge of the performance space, but I couldn’t see if that was to collect tips or be patted by the kids. Then a different dancer climbed a big pole several stories high, in another lion costume.
A strong man down the bottom hooked a long pole into the tail end of the lion and manipulated that from the ground, while the soloist did more cat-acting and acrobatics, spinning round the tip of the pole, ending with another colourful shower.
Lion Dance dancer spinning around up a very tall pole, Aberdeen Hong Kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
Absolutely brilliant! Some families invite a lion dance troupe to their homes or business to usher in the Lunar New Year and evict bad spirits. Apparently different lion troupes used to compete to ‘eat’ cabbages hung on high (so they became acrobats), the winner being paid!
Lion Dance dancer spitting out sweets & confetti on a very tall pole, Aberdeen Hong Kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
On the days before the New Year celebration Chinese families give homes a thorough cleaning to sweep away last year’s bad luck and make homes ready for good luck. (They hide brooms on New Years Day so that new good luck cannot be brushed away.) Some give homes, doors and windowpanes a new coat of red paint or decorate them with paper cutouts of Chinese auspicious phrases and couplets. I haven’t bought any more of the tissue cut pictures as they fade so fast, and out here, go mouldy, but I adore the little stuffed, embroidered & tassled decorations all the street stalls sell.
Very colourful and quite cheap – shame as means slave labour somewhere in china, I expect.
They don't really do cards as such (though I found some) but a lot of the lai-see envelopes are tiny ones dangling from or attched to the back of elaborate 3-D paper concoctions, all of citrus fruit and flowers.
The biggest event of New Year's Eve is the family dinner. A fish dish is displayed, like our Christmas dinner centrepieces/ main course. A lot of windows had the most amazing sweets, out of sticky rice or jelly, I think, that looked like real ornage & white coi carp. Then some go to temples to pray for a prosperous new year; but now many have parties and a countdown to the new lunar year. We stayed in as we really didn’t fancy battling the crowds and it was actually pretty cold! Instead we took advantage of the fact it’s the only time of year the club at Middle Island is closed (at the club HQ volunteer European sailing staff and members run the bar!) so we moored both our boats there to fill up their water tanks and use power tools on them.
Pete finally dumped the old boat on the back platform - more space, yay!
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
Our catamaran AND our houseboat docked at Middle Island, Hong Kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
New Years Day is for welcoming the deities of the heavens and earth, beginning at midnight. Avoiding eating meat ensures longevity, and lighting fires or using knives is bad luck, so all food is cooked the day before. (Though every café and restaurant we passed seemed to have queues of families booked in for banquets so they must have been cooking!). Families visit their oldest and most senior members. New clothes, shoes and haircuts are usually worn to signify a new beginning- so lots of shops have their New year sales just before the holiday.
Riot in Hong Kong - Bossini was 5 minutes late opening. ooh the language and some handling goods/ trying to duck under the closed door....
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
We went to Pizza Hut (oooh) in Repulse Bay and were rather un-impressed by the special New Years pizza full of baked abalone and oysters they were trying to sell us all. Yik.
Fireworks and firecrackers are traditional, but like Hong Kong, many regions have banned as the number of fires around New Years challenged the fire departments. We could actually hear (and see smoke clouds & occasional flashes), the huge government display (which was on in the main harbour) from our boat, all the way over the mountains!
The second day of the New Year, married women visit their parents, and everyone prays to ancestors and gods.
They give extra food and love to dogs, as that day is the birthday of all dogs.
The third and fourth day of the Chinese New Year are generally accepted as bad days to visit relatives and friends as it is thought to be easy to get into arguments. (From too much fried food and visiting during the first two days). Hmm, sounds like something more people should avoid/ do after Christmas too! The third day is for grave-visiting instead and we saw lots of people going to ‘proper’ grave yards, or the unofficial Chinese ones dotted around slopes everywhere, clutching greenery and things to burn.
I noticed all the big fishing boats had their prow alter displays of greenery renewed/ blessed too. This is another time of year the government get very twitchy, as everything is bone dry after no rain for months, and people leave burning objects and incense sticks on the graves…..
The seventh day, the common man's birthday, is when everyone grows one year older. People get together to toss a colourful raw fish salad and make wishes for continued wealth and prosperity. The ninth day Chinese offer prayers and sugarcane to the Jade Emperor of Heaven as it’s his birthday. I still haven’t tried sugar cane (not that I should eat it, being diabetic – but I had it when we were kids in Belize) but you see it on sale in street stalls a lot, or ready to be made into drinks as you watch.
pomellos - giant football sized grapefruit. Chinese New Year fruit packaging in supermarket, Hong KOng
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
The fifteenth and last day of the New Year, rice dumplings, and Tangyuan a sweet glutinous rice ball brewed in a soup, are eaten. Candles are lit outside houses to guide wayward spirits home. As it’s the Lantern Festival, families walk the street carrying lighted lanterns. Like I saw last year they really have the most massive, impressive lanterns, our Halloween efforts are pitiful! Still hate the all-singing all flashing twirling plastic ones a lot of the kids get bought, yuk! One of the street stalls that usually sells odd dried things (beans & nuts?) and sweets was doing a roaring trade in special seasonal biscuity looking things, so I got a selection to try – well I pointed at a few and the lady chattered away in Cantonese and gave me a mix bag of the entire selection. Pete and I ate in MacDonalds (for a treat and all the normal local cafes’ restaurants were inundates with booked parties) so got to see the Year of the Rat packaging Mac Ds were selling, and free Lai see envelopes!
Chinese New year packaging, Mac donalds - thats meant to be a rat!
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
Then we tried the biscuity things. The one in the shape of the traditional old coins was IMPOSSIBLE to bite, I thought I’d broken another tooth!
Chinese New Year biscuits, cat breaking jaw on concrete disguised as dough peanut shortbread. Hong Kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
Sort of a fossilised pastry/ shortcake flavour. The ball with the red nobbly end was worse,
Eating Chinese New Year sweets in MacDonalds, yakky red dough bit on sesame seed shell. Hong Kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
though filled with sesame seeds.
Chinese New Year biscuits, yakky red dough bit on sesame seed shell, and sort of peanut shortbread. Hong Kong
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
We gave up and tried the shortcake (peanutty) back at the Middle Island bar, when Billy the barman saw us attempting the other bits and came running over to correct us – most of them are meant to be heated! It did make the ‘tough’ ones almost edible but can’t say I’d bother again!
