GONG XI FA CAI! Happy Chinese New Year!
Okay, so it was over a week ago…but I’m going to write about it anyways.
So, while all of you were cutting up doilies for paper valentines and receiving roses and chocolates or celebrating anti-love day parties…Chinese people around the world were saying goodbye to the Year of the Ox and reigning in the Year of the Tiger.
The Chinese New Year, also known as the Lunar New Year is, from what I can tell, the most important Chinese holiday. Now, all I know about the new year in China is based on a few minutes of National Geographic I saw on TV in a taxi the other night. But, from what I saw it’s a night dedicated to families reuniting. There’s lots of fireworks and celebration. That’s about all I can tell you about that.
But, I do have some experience with the Lunar New Year here in Indonesia. According to Wikipedia (however accurate that is) there are more than 7 million overseas Chinese here in Indonesia. And, in my own experience I’ve seen that, even when overseas, Chinese cultural traditions have remained an important part of their lives. However, in the past the relationship between native Indonesians and Overseas Chinese has been…rocky…to say the least. So, I was curious to see how this Chinese New Year would go down in this country.
The fireworks were definitely here, and apparently most of the traditions are also maintained. Talking to my students I’ve found that children really love the Chinese New Year because of its best feature. Apparently all those unmarried Chinese people receive money in red envelopes from the married members of the family!
I was also happy to find that decorations were everywhere! Specifically at the malls. So, on the day of Chinese New Year we headed to the mall in hopes of seeing some New Years celebrations! We started our celebration with a truly odd and uncomfortable experience. We went to a fish spa…where you can pay 120,000Rp (about $12) for a half four with your feet in a pool full of fish who have a particular taste for dead skin. It’s the strangest feeling, having I don’t know how many little fish nibbling on your feet. It’s hard to explain, but it was kind of like putting your feet on a vibrating massage chair. While having the treatment done we were reading some info on the treatment and found there’s really no proven benefit to having your feet eaten by fish…but I suppose it’s a unique experience either way…
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Next I went for another different Chinese experience…a Chinese fortuneteller! What made it even more interesting was that the fortuneteller only spoke Indonesian. SO, I got to listen to my future being told to me by a complete stranger in a foreign language. It wasn’t particularly useful information…but it was certainly interesting. After shuffling some little cards around she laid them down in a spiral and mostly just told me my life would go well. So that’s good to know.
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baby barongsai
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Another exciting part of the Chinese New Year was getting to see the Barongsai, or as you might know it, those dancing dragon things. We made a little video.
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But by far my favorite part of the Chinese New Year is Chinese astrology. I strongly recommend everyone Google their Chinese horoscope now. After looking up my own Chinese horoscope (I’m a fire rabbit) I found a lot of it to be really accurate. It’s unbelievable how specific the information is. There’s information about who you can have the best relationships and the best friendships with. And even how parents get along with their children and what kind of person you are at work. It was amazing how much of it really seemed to ring a bell.
I met a woman in Singapore who sold jade jewelry, who illustrated all the complicated drama that is Chinese astrology. She explained that my roommate, who is a tiger shouldn’t carry a jade tiger because the tiger is currently in conflict with the Duke, and that, as a rabbit I had to carry the triad of dog, sheep and pig, and on and on and on.
It was really interesting…and so amazing to see how deeply this woman believed in it all. I now carry my jade triad everywhere, in the hopes that it will do it’s job and bring good people into my life!
Happy Chinese New Year and good luck to you all in this Year of the Tiger!
Have a great day!
..kristin..
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Wow! You started blogging again! Yay!
So they actually have a place in Virginia that does the foot-eating fish thing. I read an article about it and I thought the idea was that they eat the dead skin off your feet, so it’s like a less intense way to do all the things you hate about pedicures. Or at least that’s how they’re marketing it to bules in VA…