Chinese New Year is just like the SuperBowl

Randy sent this email over last night about Chinese New Year. If you make some substitions, like Black and Gold lawn ornaments and banners for the orange flowers and red posters, and "Go Steelers" for the greeting, sounds a lot like Pittsburgh right now.

You’d asked that I describe for you some of the activities surrounding the
Chinese new years holiday.

The Chinese calendar is a lunar calendar so Chinese new years is not always the same date on our calendar. The celebration starts a week before the event and goes for about a week beyond. It is also called the spring festival and is a time when many people go home to visit family and friends. Some only do this every couple of years. This is especially important in Shenzhen where over two thirds of the current population are from other areas of China. So many of our workers are gone for a full week, some extend to two weeks. The transportation systems, customs, delivery services all shut down for about a week making business transactions difficult. Many of the small stores and restaurants close so the owners or employees can go home.

Prior to the holiday, people place ornamental orange plants everywhere. They are beautiful, but I’m told the oranges are inedible, purely ornamental. Everyone hangs red posters on their doors much like wreaths, with Chinese characters on them indicating happy new year, good luck and prosperity. There are also pictures of children in traditional garments, with hands folded in the normal way of asking for a gift and pictures of fish. Most Buddhists make a visit to the temple to pray and learn their fortunes or seek favor for loved ones. There is a kind of white water lily brought into the house to bring good fortune to the household. There are traditions about
eating fish for good luck and about giving gifts for good luck and prosperity. I obviously didn’t eat any fish, but did give out some gifts, though I doubt any prosperity will come of it.

The common gift is something called a red envelope or red packet, which normally is given with a quantity of money inside. Children will ask adults for red envelopes, as will waitresses, beggars, flower girls, employees, strangers. The normal greeting is “xin nian kuai le”, meaning “happy new years”. The response from most people is “xin nian kuai le” and sometimes “gongxi facai” for “congratulations and prosper”. Many, however respond with “xin nian kuai le hongbau nalai” for “hand over the red envelope”. Of course, they explain that it is very good luck and brings prosperity to give a red envelope, even with a very small amount of kuai in it.

Fireworks and firecrackers are going off constantly for two weeks. At the plant across the street from us it seems they dumped a pickup load of firecrackers in the driveway and lit them. They went off for over fifteen minutes. While I was going for a walk, I saw kids only two or three years old setting off strings of firecrackers in Sui Wen Tou. Fireworks went off every night all night long in and around Shekou. Many of them were private fire works, though the police tried to stop any private displays of large ones.

Now the holiday is winding down and most are back to work, except some who are on extended holiday. The stores are re-opening, the restaurants and bars are coming back to full staff. When I told the engineers at work that I was taking off for superbowl, one of them said “I’ve heard that is a very important American holiday, happy holiday”.

Starting tomorrow, most everything is back to normal.