by Chris Bolster Out with the old, in with the new. Saturday, February 9 is Lunar New Year’s Eve, the last day of the Year of the Dragon. A billion and a half people around the world, not only Chinese or Taiwanese but also Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese will celebrate Lunar New Year this weekend. So will my family.
The festival is commonly called Chinese New Year, but many people uncomfortable with the politics of the name prefer Lunar New Year. For those who celebrate it, Lunar New Year is the most important holiday of the year.
The date on which the new year begins changes from year to year because the lunar calendar doesn’t match up with the Gregorian calendar used in the west. It’s based on solar and lunar happenings like the cycle of the moon and the seasons. Another name for Lunar New Year, common in Taiwan, is Chun Tian, or Spring Festival, marking the first day of spring.
A big part of Lunar New Year is bringing family and friends together. As a westerner experiencing the holiday, my best initial characterization was to imagine Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s all rolled into one holiday and spread over a week. On Lunar New Year’s Eve, families organize reunion dinners and eat dishes that are only prepared for the occasion.
Almost all shops close for a week, except for gas stations and convenience stores, so there’s nowhere else to go. People stay home or travel to visit friends.
Living in Taiwan, my family’s reunion New Year’s celebration was usually held at my father-in-law’s home. My wife’s mother’s family would brave the freeway traffic jams to Taichung and spend the day and evening eating, playing mah-jong and watching New Year’s variety shows on television.
A lot of preparation goes into Lunar New Year. Families decorate their homes with a variety of decorations from red lanterns to squares of red paper painted in elaborate calligraphy with the characters for spring, or good fortune or happiness. Homes are cleaned because it is considered bad luck to sweep the floor during the holiday, worried that good luck will be swept out of the home. They shop for food that will be served at the reunion meal.
This year, the holidays will be a little different for my wife Peng Chia-ling. It will be the first New Year celebrated away from her family. I can empathize with her because I missed more than a decade of Christmases and New Years living in Taiwan where western holidays don’t hold the same significance. I know it’s not easy.
As a Taiwanese-Canadian family living outside of the major centres of Vancouver or Toronto, we have to find our own way to celebrate the holiday. In the same way we decorated a Christmas tree in our apartment in Taichung, we will mark this auspicious occasion of the beginning of spring and start off the Year of the Snake with a reunion dinner at our house in Powell River. Xīn nián kuài lè.
Chris Bolster is a reporter at the Powell River Peak and lived and worked in Taiwan for more than a decade.
