The lowdown on Chinese New Year

Friday 12 February 2010, 9.57 AM
By The Team | Posted in Events

Chinese New Year is the perfect opportunity to see Chinese superstition and culture in full, living technicolour. It’s the footy finals of Chinese celebrations, two weeks of festivities that kick-start this weekend with lots of eating, firecrackers and lion dancing, all to celebrate the Year of the Metal Tiger.

Here’s your guide on Chinese traditions and customs so when you’re chowing down in Little Bourke Street this weekend, you’ll have all the inside information.

I like Chinese
Food is an incredibly important part of Chinese culture. At Chinese New Year, the menu will include many dishes laden with significance as well as flavour. Much of this significance comes from homophones, words that sound the same but have different meanings.

In Mandarin, the word for fish sounds like ‘abundance’, so eating fish during the festival will mean a year of plenty.

Ordering a whole chicken at Chinese New Year means ‘great luck will be bestowed on you’. Because a whole chicken represents ‘unity’ you need to watch out when ordering, a whole chicken will always include the head and the feet because you don’t want your luck to be cut off!

Dumplings signify prosperity as they are shaped like silver ingots.

Vegetarians should order Buddha’s Delight (Jai), a combination of foods that represent good fortune: ginkgo nut (silver), lotus seeds (fertility), black moss (wealth), dried bean curd (happiness), bamboo shoots (well wishes) and vermicelli noodles (long life).

Test your ordering skills at these Chinese restaurants this weekend

Dancing with lions
This Sunday you’ll see lion dancing all along the newly refurbished Little Bourke Street. Like the fire crackers you will undoubtedly hear, lion dancers scare away evil spirits and bring good luck and prosperity. Businesses will tempt the lions to visit their property by offering symbolic foods such as lettuce representing money and good fortune or oranges which signify gold.

Make sure you wear new clothes to herald the New Year and the colour red which is a highly auspicious colour for the Chinese. Whatever you do, don’t wear white – in China, white is the colour for mourning and death.

Chinatown will be bustling with street stalls with food and Chinese handicrafts, and no shortage of cultural entertainment ranging from a karaoke competition to the high-pitched tunes of Chinese opera.

The Millennium Dai Loong dragon, the most powerful creature in Chinese mythology (and carried by 200 people), will weave its way through the streets bringing good fortune to all.

So make sure you touch the dragon for good luck during 2010 and we Gung Het Fat Choy (wish you prosperity and wealth).

Happy new Chinese year!

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