Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Many cultures mark Chinese New Year

Marketplace \| Services \| Contact Us \| Community \| Arts & Entertainment \| Local Guides

Saturday, February 5, 2000

Many cultures mark Chinese New Year
The open of the year of the golden dragon marked by gifts, fireworks
By Mary Lee Grant
Caller-Times
Staff writer Mary Lee Grant can be reached at 886-3752 or by e-mail at grantm@caller.com

George Tuley/Caller-Times

Girls rehears a traditional Vietnamese dance at St. Peter's Catholic Church where the Chinese New Year will be celebrated.

As the Chinese New Year rings in today, children will watch with excitement as parents and elders hang red envelopes on trees covered with yellow flowers.
   Homeowners will sweep their houses clean and families will present gifts of jasmine tea wrapped in bright red paper to the elderly.
   Much more venerable than the madness of the newfangled Western millennium, Feb. 5 marks the 4697th year on the Chinese calendar, the year of the golden dragon. "It is the holiday which makes our old people feel important and which makes our young people happy,'' said Von Nguyen, a Vietnamese woman from Rockport. "We visit the elderly and show our respect for them and bring them gifts. The children get red envelopes with crisp, new money.''
   Asians from China, Malaysia, Korea, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam throughout the Coastal Bend will celebrate the Chinese New Year today.
   The Vietnamese will celebrate the festival at 7 p.m. today at St. Peter's Catholic Church in Rockport.
   They will start their celebration with a pledge of allegiance to the Vietnamese flag and a traditional Vietnamese song. A short drama, ushering in the New Year, will follow.
   Dancers will perform to traditional music, and a traditional gambling game will be set up in which dice are marked with different animals, and people bet on which animal will come up.
   The Vietnamese also will accept donations for the poor.
   The Korean community will celebrate at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 12 with a dinner, festival and dance performance at the Bayfront Plaza Convention Center. Tickets are $25 per person and $20 for Korean War veterans.
   "We all clean out our houses on the New Year, pay our debts, and start the year fresh,'' said Kim Roberson, director of the Asian Cultures Museum, which is sponsoring the Korean celebration. "This is the first time we have ever had a celebration open to the public. In the past, it was in our homes.''
   The celebrations are based on the lunar New Year, Roberson said.
   "In Asian cultures, farmers planted by the cycles of the moon, so the lunar New Year is very important,'' Roberson said.
   A time for amusement
   In ancient China, people wrote poems, known as spring couplets, with black ink on large vertical scrolls of red paper, which they hung in doorways to usher in the New Year.
   The Kitchen God was honored with a farewell dinner of sweets and honey. Stores closed for the last three days of the old year and remained shut for the first week of the New Year.
   Traditionally, all food had to be prepared before the New Year began, so that scissors and knives would avoid cutting the luck. New Year's Eve and New Year's Day were times of family feasts. At midnight on New Year's Eve, the young members of the family would bow and pay respect to their elders.
   On New Year's Day, children were given Red Lai-See Envelopes, containing money for good luck in red envelopes.
   This is still practiced in the Coastal Bend.
   "The children really look forward to it,'' Nguyen said. "We buy artificial yellow flowers and put them on a prosperity tree, and then hang red envelopes on the tree with money in (them) for children. It is usually a $2 bill. We go to the bank to get the money fresh, because it is thought that you are wishing people bad luck if you give them old, crumpled money.''
   The entire first week of the New Year was a time for amusement, with lion dances, acrobatic performances, street theater and firecrackers.
   "We still set off firecrackers on the New Year, and will have fireworks outside the church,'' Nguyen said.
   Firecrackers were originally set off to drive away evil spirits, and were popped during the first two weeks of the New Year.
   Determining character
   The seventh day of the New Year was called "everybody's birthday,'' because everyone was considered a year older at that date. The celebrations ended on the 15th day with a lantern festival in which a lantern was carried through the streets along with a dragon made of bamboo silk and paper, which could reach more than 100 feet long.
   In Chinese astrology, the year in which a person is born also determines that person's character. In Chinese astrology, the year of the dragon can be particularly lucky.
   "I am the year of the monkey and my husband is the year of the Tiger,'' Nguyen said. "I have some of the qualities of the monkey, I think, like speed and intelligence, and he has the Tiger's temper. But even though we aren't supposed to get along, we do. I'm glad we didn't just go by astrology.''

| Talk about this story | Next Story | Home |

[ Printer-friendly version ]
[ Subscribe to newspaper ]

SEND THIS PAGE TO A FRIEND

[an error occurred while processing this directive]