The Chinese New Year can be a rather forlorn time for foreigners new in the country, with few Chinese acquaintances, since the period is, for Chinese everywhere, joyously reserved as a time for family and friends. No doubt Chinese just arrived in the West during the Christmas season are also struck with the same feelings. However, as the length of my sojourn with China has passed successively onward through the years dedicated to the snake, horse, sheep, monkey, cock, dog, and pig, enjoyment of the Chinese New Year season has deepened, enriched by interaction with Chinese friends and my own comprehending participation.
The New Year just celebrated is dedicated to the rat. Though that doesn't seem too heartening, the Chinese are very equitable about their zodiac animals -each has its important place in the overall balance of things. The Dragon Year promised good fortune and happiness, especially for those with a new Dragon Year baby. The Dog Year allowed for achievement of peace and harmony in the home. So every year has its special concern, and this Rat Year will find Chinese everywhere cognizant that it is an auspicious year for commerce, speculation, and the economy in general.
Regardless of what animal is overseeing the new year, however, the holiday customs, rituals, and atmosphere are perennial. Though many older Chinese do bemoan a loss of tradition-a fading away of formal exactness and of demonstrated appreciation for the nation's special abundance in a more casual and materially prosperous age-to an outsider, the period seems immensely rich in custom and ritual, in a notable atmosphere of goodwill and family care.
Absorbed into the Chinese pre-holiday awareness of the many things to be done at this time, I laughed at myself a little as I found myself on hands and knees cleaning out the backs of cupboards, throwing out old clothes, buying new kitchen utensils, and quietly slipping my friendly laundromat manager a small hung pao (a red envelope with a money gift inside) in gratitude for his service for the year. I admit also to the secret hope that he would run my washing through before he tackled the mountain of curtains that my Chinese counterparts were bringing in the door by the armful.
However, my spot of spring cleaning was miniscule compared to the frenzy of activity in my neighbors' homes 24 hours before the eve of the New Year, when, according to custom, households must sparkle, all holiday supplies be laid in, and obeisances to gods and reverances to ancestors be completed. The preparations, in fact, had been going vigorously on for at least a week in most households.
On the 23rd day of the last lunar month, one week before the New Year festival (which fell on Feb. 2 by the Western calendar), traditional households throughout the country performed a yearly rite wherein the God of the Hearth is sent off to heaven to report on the family's performance and, hopefully, to make remonstrations on its behalf. Usually, a small traditional picture of the deity is prepared for burning, and the family ritually ask his good graces on their behalf. In Taiwan, the custom is particularly quaint. The man of the house will cajole the Hearth God into a drink of kaoliang (a spirit distilled from millet) in an effort to get him jolly enough that he will forget to submit any negative reports. The mother of the family will then smear the lips of the deity's image with sugar to help sweeten his words. In a curious divergence, the Hearth God on the mainland is pictured as an old man, but on Taiwan has all the cheek and wit of a younger and merrier fellow. The venerable mainland personage certainly doesn't appear the type to tolerate the frivolous levity that abounds in Taiwan TV holiday skits, which revel in the misadventures of the more malleable Taiwan deity.
My neighbour, Mrs. Wei, invited me to go holiday shopping with her, warning me first—as I have been warned by hundreds of others over my years here-that during the New Year celebrations it would be impossible to buy food since the city would be almost shut down for at least four days. With the dire specter of starvation before my eyes, in years past I obediently bought up an adequate advance supply of provisions for my family, only to find ourselves later besieged by presentations of traditional foods over this period, and by invitations from friends to feast together. After experiencing four days of constant eating each year without ever touching my own food supply, I no longer bother.
This year, it was just as well. I had few purchases, and my friend utilized all my extra carrying capacity to manage huge acquisitions of food, new clothes for the family, presents for friends, and other New Year paraphernalia.
Red is the color of the Chinese New Year, and taken with its festive spirit, our first stop was at a roadside stall glittering in reds and golds with occasional splashes of silver and jet black. There were red envelopes, waiting to be stuffed with crisp,' new bills for children; red greeting cards, a new custom with a bow to Western holiday tradition, but with their own Chinese flavor; and myriad red paper cutouts-most of them single Chinese word characters, or poems, or depictions of important gods. While the young man running the stall took care of the brisk trade, an older man in a venerable Chinese scholar's gown, using oversized, elegant brushes, wrote big calligraphic characters— happiness, prosperity, riches, and longevity—in gold or black ink on large red sheets of paper. Such custom work is purchased as decorative wrapping for boxed presents and as wall adornments for the home, to add to its holiday air of festivity.
For doorways, especially important in Chinese architectural and folk culture, the New Year decorations are indications of the cultured, warm family living within. Available for this purpose were red banners, some just plain strips of cotton fabric, others marvellously embroidered in brilliant colors. A special Chinese character may be pasted to the center of the door itself, the most common and significant of these being chun (spring), welcoming the coming season; it is often placed upside down until New Year's Day, when it may be righted. The door post will, also, frequently be decorated with appropriately meaningful poems done in careful calligraphy on strips of red paper.
A few steps down the road brought us to a group of very vocal clothes vendors. One man vouched for the extra warmth of his sweaters, another the special durability of a brand of socks. A dowdily dressed but matronly vendor tried to convince picky buyers of the up-to-the-minute eye catchiness of her "New-Wave" down jackets. A raucous young fellow bellowed about the unbeatable classic elegance of his stock of delicately patterned mien ao (Chinese padded jackets).
My companion plunged fully into the fray, intent on equipping her two: daughters, son, husband, and herself with new holiday wardrobes at the lowest possible prices she could cadge from the crafty salesmen. I, as usual, was happy to merely stand back and inspect things handed out to me, in the market game being no more than what the Chinese call a tu pao tzu (dumpling filled with dirt), which means, frankly, quite useless. But Mrs. Wei, like many of her countrymen, has been trained to it from childhood. Chinese market bargainers are so good at the artful pastime and enjoy it so much, that I always feel I am witness to a master performance. After a lively twenty minutes, Mrs. Wei's clothes bargaining was completed, and we gossipped happily about how many New Taiwan dollars she had managed to scrounge off the asking price. I good naturedly congratulated her, but guessed that the seemingly desperate clothes vendors would be smiling in satisfaction too.
We both wanted to stop at a group of special stores made from tenting, much like a Bedouin encampment, which appears each year for the New Year season. Hung from their ceilings to their floors were dried meat and fish, fragrantly spiced sausages, smoked ducks which had been pressed flat—no place for the vegetarian or the slightly squeamish. Years ago, I was horrified to see rows of what looked suspiciously like dried sweetbreads, only to find the same food served at a friend's table for New Year's dinner; it was, in fact, fish roe-delicious it was too, and for me, a handsdown winner over caviar.
Meat is the preeminent New Year food. In the China of yesteryear, its appearance in such abundance at the New Year table was greatly enhanced by reason of its dearth for most families throughout the rest of the year. Friends have told me how excited they would be as children to have such New Year delicacies as the special sausages and dried, salted fish, as well as a soup made of a whole, carefully raised and freshly killed chicken. The diet for most of the population till the next New Year consisted mainly of rice, sweet potatoes, vegetables and, rarely, some added slices of fatty pork. The processes for preparing and drying the New Year meats came about over the centuries because of the absence of refrigeration or other safe storage. But those are bygone days. The lavishness of family dinners in today's Taiwan homes on any ordinary night, pose problems to cooks who want to present family and friends with something special during the New Year. For this reason, the special dried, smoked, and spiced meats serve a very festive purpose. Accordingly, people mostly treat them as delicacies to be savored only as special treats for New Year palates.
Nevertheless, modern people are fickle creatures where custom is concerned, and I have noticed that the Chinese cook who forgoes the specially grown range chicken for the New Year feasts, and instead makes a soup of humble vegetables, is being hailed more and more for her creativity.
It is interesting, however, how vegetarians here face the problem of variety. A couple of years ago, my family and I were invited to spend the Chinese New Year at a Buddhist temple, where everyone was avowedly vegetarian by preference. However, we were very entertained to find vegetarian favorites such as dried bean curd cake done up in fish and chicken shapes, and dishes of bamboo shoots accompanying shrimps made of wheat gluten.
When Chu Hsi, Chinese New Year's Eve, neared in Taipei, offices, shops, and factories all closed down for vacation. The streets were filled with last minute shoppers, and the central train and bus stations harbored immense, milling throngs, some coming, others going, but all heading for the senior family home, where they would stay throughout New Year's Day. The second day of the New Year is dedicated to visiting in-laws, daughters returning home and bringing their husbands and families. Those not having this obligation spend the time with friends, just sitting around, eating and talking, or perhaps taking group outings into the countryside. Many offices and factories arrange to take employees on tours to favorite parts of the island for a few days, from the second or third day of the festival.
Whatever plans people have, to be sure, no one is just sitting around doing nothing. The Chinese New Year is characterized by people on the move. For foreigners, though, the holiday throngs impose a sheer difficulty in moving about. Going to see a movie or to the sunny south of the island, now requires coping with long lines of people. The happy person adopts a laissez-faire attitude about whether his object will actually be achieved, and mingles with the crowds and participates in their evident openness and friendliness. It is a lovely time to be with Chinese people. Normally attentive to the pressures of work, study, and family responsibilities, they relish the most extensive general holiday of the year, and a relaxed and jubilant air is the keynote.
The morning before the New Year, I had the privilege of meeting with Professor Lilian Chao, one of China's most distinguished and talented women. Well settled into her 80s, Professor Chao is a living link with the richly traditional Chinese culture of the early l900s. And it seems to be her chosen, or perhaps her given, task to instruct younger generations of Chinese in these traditions. That morning, she agreed to instruct me a little on the formalities surrounding a traditional Chinese New Year.
Dressed in an understated but exquisitely elegant hand-embroidered silk jacket and long traditional black skirt, Professor Chao looked, as she is, a most imposing woman. The embroidered phoenix on her jacket is not a symbol to be worn by frivolous young women, under 40. Her lovely home in Taiwan is in the Japanese style, of wood, and with a garden filled with the best loved Chinese shrubs, trees, and flowers.
Professor Chao had filled her home with a display of traditional icons, food stuffs, and flowers to accompany the Chinese New Year festival. We talked first about the traditional gods, a casual subject for the TV generation, but still holding the active interest of legions. The group she introduced to me via both lovely paintings and sculpted images is specially remembered during the New Year, the most important of Chinese festivals. Kuan Yin, Goddess of Mercy, from her seat on a lotus flower hears both the laughter and sadness of the Chinese people. By her side were the Golden Boy and Jade Girl, lovers who came to earth in seven different lives but never managed to find each other. Confucius, who is generally revered for his philosophic spirit, not as a deity, was here too, surrounded by pots of blooming crysanthemums (the flower always associated with him) that had been stimulated by professional florists, coaxed to bloom for the New Year. Here too was Kuan Kung, a very impressive hero who is not only the God of War, but also the God of Literature. He was a warrior who knew by rote the Spring and Autumn Analects and sought always to apply the great classics of Chinese wisdom to his life. He is also God of Tradesmen, and is entreated to assure honesty in business dealings. Perhaps the two most popular gods of Taiwan are Matsu, Goddess of the Sea, who provides special protection for sail ors and fishermen, and Tu Ti Kung, the Earth God, who is, of course, the farmers' favorite. The Hearth God, as mentioned earlier, has a specially honorable place in the Chinese New Year.
The flowers that filled Professor Chao's home, she explained, each had symbolic significance for the festival. In one vase, plum blossoms just starting to bloom were arranged with bamboo and pine sprigs, the grouping symbolizing friends-the plum blossom, which appears even when the weather is still very cold, also signifies reliability and perseverance; the bamboo is known for its compatibility, its utility, providing shoots to eat and strong, flexible stems for furniture and other articles; the evergreen pine evokes longevity and steadiness.
A table held symbolic foods prepared for the ritual offering later in the day before the family shrine. In almost every household in which the nominal head-of a family resides, a small wooden tablet on which is inscribed the family's ancestral lineage is erected on a small altar, not so much for worship as in respectful memorium. In more religious families, statues of gods will also have a seat on this altar.
Each of the foods on Professor Chao's table had special significance. Most obviously, every plate contained four of something, a custom, Professor Chao explained, that she has retained from the China mainland. In Taiwan, four, which is pronounced as szu in Chinese, thus giving it the same sound as the character for die, is considered unlucky. Therefore, the Taiwanese will usually put three of everything on holiday plates-a number which suggests completion. There was a dish of apples, ping kuo in Chinese, the ping also meaning peace. The perfect, golden mandarin oranges stood for wealth. Nien kao (literally sticky cake) is one of my personal favorites; it embodies the charming idea of melding the family together. In a similar way yuan hsiao (round balls), sticky rice-flour sweets stuffed with sweetened bean paste, reassure the ancestors and remind the living generations of the preciousness of the family circle. A plate of sweet sugar cane segments, banded prettily in red and specially selected for strong, well-defined nodes, indicates the steps of upward mobility to which every family aspires.
Professor Chao has a particular fondness for the humble chiao tzu, small, crescent-shaped meat dumplings; she recalled nostalgically how she and her daughters would spend the morning before the New Year together, wrapping the meat in thin pastry skins. In the Peking of yesteryear, tradition had it that something should be wrapped into the chiao tzu for luck. For her elder daughter, she once put in a curtain ring to symbolize her hopes for her daughter's marriage. For another child, she put in an American dime, since Chinese coins were either too big in size or too low in value. The child was enraptured by such a princely prize of "American gold." In her own chiao tzu, her children wrapped a thin but long piece of string, thus assuring the long life she has since enjoyed.
Professor Chao offered me a sweet from a tray of preserved fruits and candied seeds which she had specially made up to treat New Year visitors. Everything on the tray was also chosen for its meaningfulness as an embellishment to this festival. The lotus seeds, for example, were especially succulent. Professor Chao explained that their Chinese name lien tzu is made up of the element tzu, meaning seed and also children; and lien is a chain. Thus as I enjoyed their interesting flavor, I was also being wished a "chain of children."
I took leave of my hostess and crossed town to the home of close friends with whom we were to see in the New Year; on the way I was startled again and again by children exploping firecrackers in the streets. Just as many Swiss children ski down snowy slopes almost as quickly as they can walk, and some Eskimo children catch their own fish for supper by three, so too, have Chinese children mastered an intimate aspect of their special environment - firecrackers. Their little one-cent bungers and tiny whizzing rockets were a mere warm-up for midnight's volcanic rumble. Far from worrying about their children handling these miniature explosives, many families follow the custom calling for the youngest family member to light even the 10 to 20 foot strings of play "dynamite" that would all but ignite the city at midnight.
When I arrived, I found my friend's l6-year-old son busy giving the family altar a sprucing. It was a reassuring sight, a rebuttal to lamentations frequently heard from older Chinese that traditions, especially filial piety, are disappearing.
We sat down at the table, an intimate group of twelve adults and children, to the most sumptuous feast of the year.
Though this family, like many others, considers itself to be very traditional, it was not at all formal in carrying out traditions. After dinner, mother and father sat comfortably in their big armchairs, and the children, one by one, kowtowed, not a little awkardly, before them. This age-old Chinese ritual tradition of showing respect for and obedience to their parents, also assures that the children will receive nicely filled red envelopes as a reward. My friends' children listened demurely to their parents' loving commendations of their performances throughout the year and to exhortations to try even harder during the coming year. Then they laughed with pleasure as the red envelopes were passed over.
They had been dreaming of the toys, books, clothes, or firecrackers they might buy with the money—I'm sure those legendary angels who spend their red envelope money on school—related books are very few. My own little son is also old enough to know the significance of the red envelopes, and hit quickly on the idea that all he would have to do to get one was to do this little acrobatic trick before our bountiful hosts. His request to perform too was granted, and he was indulged with shrieks of laughter and a fat little red envelope for somersaulting around the floor before the ceremonial armchairs.
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six ... and throughout every laneway and from every balcony in the city, the strings of firecrackers were hanging ready. Five, four, three ... and chubby little hands were being helped by fathers, uncles, or elder brothers or sisters to light the fuses. Two, one, here we go ....I greeted with fingers jammed into my ears, and nose as deep as possible into my overcoat, a city enveloped in a manmade, roaring earthquake—Happy New Year, Welcome the Year of the Rat, Kung hsi, kung hsi!