“No washing your hair in the New Year,” my mother used to tell me back in Taiwan. “You’ll wash away luck.”
That’s just one of the superstitions when it comes to celebrating Lunar New Year, the biggest holiday of the year for East Asians. The 15-day celebration, which starts Tuesday, is a time to start anew. Families kick off the year with new clothes, new money and feasts fit for a king.
With the arrival of the Year of the Tiger, Asian Americans across the region are set to ring in the auspicious holiday, carrying forward our own cultural ties to our new homes in America. Chinese New Year, also known as the Lunar New Year, signals the beginning of spring and a time of hope.
New Year celebrations are steeped in cultural traditions. Even after we emigrated a world away to the U.S., my family and other immigrant families continued our celebrations. It is what makes us who we are as Asian Americans.
Asian immigrants in America tend to have small families. So fellow immigrants become our extended support system. When I was growing up in Queens, my parents would gather with friends from Taiwan to celebrate.
New Year’s is much more subdued in the U.S., without as much fanfare. That was especially true when I was growing up in the 1970s and there were fewer immigrant Asian families in the area. It was a time to catch up with friends, eat delicious foods such as ti pan roast pork, noodles, which symbolize a long life, and nian gao, which are stir-fried rice cakes, with sliced pork and cabbage.
That’s quite a contrast from my youth in Taiwan, when the holiday was a bigger deal. Commerce shuts down for the two weeks of the Lunar New Year. It’s a festive time, with firecrackers popping and homes decorated in red lanterns and calligraphy on red papers.
The start of the celebration is always spent with the immediate family. That meant my paternal grandmother, uncle and two aunts.
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We would dress in red, considered a lucky color for the new year. My father, mother and brother and I would travel to grandma’s house to eat. Multigenerational families were the norm, and my uncle and his wife as well as my aunt lived with grandma, known as “po po” in Chinese. Because he was the eldest son, it was my father’s duty to take care of the family. He purchased the home for his mother and siblings.
My aunts would pull out all the stops when it came to cooking up a feast. Red braised pork with bamboo shoots was my favorite childhood food. It had a sweet flavor, a hallmark of Shanghainese cooking.
After celebration with family, the next few days of the holiday are for hosting or visiting friends. Trays of sweet candies would be laid out, and red envelopes filled with lucky money were handed out to the kids. For us children, it was a great time, as we played with other children and collected money.
The Chinese are a superstitious bunch — there are many do’s and don’ts during the season. In addition to not washing your hair to preserve your luck, you can’t sweep the floor during the first few days of Lunar New Year, since luck can be swept away, too.
Negative words such as “death,” “ghost” and “poor” are forbidden. The number four is avoided because in Chinese the word for four, “si,” also sounds like the word for death.
Luck and prosperity are revered in Chinese culture. Everything revolves around wealth in the new year. Red and gold are the lucky colors. All the foods have lucky meanings. We burn incense and paper “gold” ingots in photographic shrines to our ancestors to ensure their good fortune in the afterlife.
My parents did the best they could to retain our culture after we moved to the U.S., even with their busy lives operating a deli that was open almost every day of the year. As time progressed, the celebrations became less elaborate as we adapted to lives as Americans.
Holding on to a lucky meal
Paramus resident Cathy Eng recalls celebrating Chinese New Year as a happy time in her youth. She grew up in Arizona with her Chinese immigrant parents and extended family.
“When my mother was alive, she would make us foods. We would eat chicken and noodles that day,” Eng said.
After marrying, Eng let go of many of the Chinese traditions. But her sister would still call her annually during the holiday to remind her to eat that lucky meal, just as they had done when they were children.
When I married and left home, such traditions took a back seat. It was difficult to fully celebrate living in the Mojave Desert in California or upstate New York, areas in which I settled where the Asian population was small. I’d call my parents to wish them a happy new year and dine out at a Chinese restaurant.
After I became a mother, those customs became ever so important once again. I wanted my daughter to understand the rich history of our people. I purchased qipao, traditional dresses for the New Year season, and took her to Chinese friends’ homes to celebrate with dumplings and hot pots. I joined Asian organizations so she could experience the joy of a communal celebration, with lion dances and riddle games.
My daughter is in college now, but this Chinese mama made sure she would eat well this past weekend to kick off the Year of the Tiger. On Sunday, we drove to Manhattan to dine at La Salle Dumpling Room in Morningside Heights. Dumplings are a traditional Chinese New Year food because they’re shaped like gold ingots.
My daughter listened to me banter with the Chinese server in Mandarin and tried to listen in as a Mandarin student. She asked me what I thought about the dumplings, and I told her they were quite good because the skin was handmade. You judge the quality of a dumpling by its skin, I coached my Chinese American girl.
“Xin Nian Kwai Le,” she said with a smile.
That’s “happy new year” in Mandarin, a signal that she wanted her lucky money.
I handed over the red envelope stuffed with crisp new $20 dollar bills. As she counted, I told her it’s $80, because eight is a lucky number.
Her elation brought back memories of my own childhood, when I would plot how to spend my own New Year’s windfall.
Mary Chao 趙 慶 華 covers the Asian community and real estate for NorthJersey.com. To get unlimited access to the latest news out of North Jersey, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: mchao@northjersey.com
