My First Chinese New Year

Year of the Dragon Spring Festival

Feb 24, 2024

Greetings from Asia!

It has been a whirlwind of activity on this side of the globe. Aside from the SuperBowl and Valentine’s Day festivities, the Chinese Spring Festival aka: Chinese New Year 🧧 (CNY) ran this year from Feb 10th-17th.

Being my first Chinese New Year in Asia I got to see first hand just how big of deal this is for the people of China/Hong Kong and was able to spend some great time in a traditional setting for the CNY celebrations which included some delicious food and lots of dumplings 🥟

Year of the Dragon 🐉

The Chinese Zodiac is a system of assigning certain animals and attributes that are supposed to correlate with the numerical year. There are 12 animals so the next Year of the Dragon (for example) will be in 2036.

The exact dates change based on the lunar calendar. Year of the Dragon started on February 10th, 2024 and ends on January 29th, 2025. The previous year, Year of the Rabbit, started from January 22nd, 2023, and ending on February 9th, 2024.

You can find your own animal, based on your birth year ⬇️

Each animal has assigned attributes that the Chinese take to heart and the Zodiac year is also used almost like an almanac as to what to expect for the coming year.

Here’s a quick list of attributes by animal:

The Dragon in particular has been revered by the Chinese people for thousands of years.

Numerology

The zodiac aso uses numbers and colors assigning “lucky” and “unlucky” to each animal. There are some numbers however that are considered unlucky including 4 and 18.

For this reason in China you will not see any 4th floors. It will be 3, 3A then 5. That also means no 14th floor. 13, 13A then 15.

Also the number 18 signifies the worst place in hell (as I was told) which means there is no 18th floor. 17, 17A then 19.

This can be quite a deep and interesting rabbit hole to go down (pun intended) so feel free to do some internet or YouTube browsing.

You will often see the colors yellow and red in Chinese culture. Yellow was traditionally only worn by the emperor, representing an imperial color exuding power, royalty and prosperity.

Side note: I was walking in Hong Kong a few weeks ago wearing a yellow sweater and an older man walked by me, turned and said “wow, lucky man!”. I asked around later that day discovered it was in reference to the color of my sweater and the New Year. 😂

The color red is is auspicious—associated with life-generating energy (the sun, blood, and fire)—and is the color of celebrations and prosperity.

LaiSee/HongBao 🧧

For Chinese New Year a mandatory requirement are Red envelopes containing cash, known as hongbao in Mandarin and laisee in Cantonese. These are presented as a gesture of hospitality. The red color of the envelope symbolizes good luck and wards off evil spirits.For CNY, the red packet is also called "money warding off old age" which keeps the skin healthy from what I hear 😂

Red envelopes are usually given out to the younger generation who are normally in school or unmarried. The amount of money contained in the envelope usually ends with an even digit, following Chinese beliefs; odd-numbered money gifts are traditionally associated with funerals. For example, 8 is a lucky number. If you’re in Hong Kong you’ll see a lot of menu items ending in “88”. Same with giving the red envelopes. For example, $888 HKD is a lucky number and comes out to a little over $100 USA

Preparing and Decorating

On New Years Eve it’s very traditional to decorate walls and doors with special decorations, lanterns and door hangers. Just like decorating your house for Christmas, it’s very much a similar vibe.

One significant part of the Spring Festival is welcoming in the god of wealth at the start of the New Year. This occurs specifically on the 5th day of the new lunar year (see top right pic for god of wealth).

Each of the Mandarin scripts that are placed on the door hangers has a meaning of health, prosperity, happiness and wealth for the new year.

Shop Closures

Many Chinese work 6 days a week and run businesses that don’t allow much time for closures or being away. However for 8 days, >90% of Chinese shops and businesses close for 8 days straight. This has a significant impact on the economy but also allows for people to return to their hometowns and spend time with family.

It’s a pretty eerie scene to walk the streets of Mainland China with most shops shuttered up (like Tom Cruise running through an empty Times Square in “Vanilla Sky”)

In Hong Kong the Statutory Holiday for CNY is only 3 days, but if you have a restaurant that’s open then you will have a lot of vendors not making deliveries for 3-4 days.

Food

This might have been the part you were waiting for 😂

Chinese New Year is noted for families gathering and enjoying copious amounts of traditional dishes and…. dumplings 🥟.

In the North dumplings are traditionally boiled while in the South dumplings are generally steamed.

After indulging in numerous meals around CNY one thing that was very clear is the Chinese cuisine has a lot more variety of textures.

In the West it’s generally “crispy” or “soft”. In China there are a lot more textures including chewy, gelatinzed, “bouncy” which all effect the flavor of the dish oyu are eating.

The above meal set is very traditional. Steamed buns (mantou), dried fish, century eggs (dipped in black vinegar sauce), steamed beef leg, wok seared chicken gizzard, pigs ear salad and canteloupe melon.

This meal set was a feast. Whole fried fish in sweet and sour sauce, crispy chicken strips, red bean spring rolls, bell peppers, tofu cucumber salad, wood ear mushroom, gelatinized pork skin and sweet fried rice cakes.

There were always one or two dipping sauces at meals which prol skin, mushrooms etc could be used for extra flavor bombs.

The festivities are traditionally a relaxing time since most people return to hometowns. Seeing family and friends, sharing meals and drinks; extremely chill and relaxing.

This dish of soy braised chicken with rice noodles and a special mushroom that comes from the very northeast of China was so comforting and delicious 🤤

Finally the dumplings.

These were northen style boiled dumplings with a pork and chinese chive filling. We also did scrambled egg with chive, and pork with fennel. 🤤

Keep an eye out for the next Substack where I will show you how to make these at home 😋 including 2 wonderful dipping sauces.

Parade

New Years Eve night around 8pm begins the nationwide broadcast which runs until 1am. Shows, dances, music, skits etc are performed by various famous artists raging from extremely traditional to more modern. Including an appearance by Chinese astronauts streaming from spaece.

There were no English subtitles but the music in particular was fascinating.

The live stream bounced around between 7 different major cities/provinces in the nation that were also doing live performances.

It was really cool and enjoyable.

Fireworks

Finally, you can’t talk about CNY without mentioning fireworks. Expect to hear fireworks for the entire week as family, children, and friends enjoy this tradition of lighting up rockets that explode into brilliant colors and patterns in the the sky.