Happy Chinese New Year!
恭喜發財/Gong Hei Fat Choi/Gong Xi Fa Cai!
Chinese/Lunar New Year is the most important holiday in China and the Chinese culture. Many Chinese celebrate the holiday in China and around the world. In the old days, the Chinese would celebrate for a whole 15.5 days from New Year's Eve until the 15 day of the first month on the Lunar calendar. There are many websites that explains all the traditions and superstitions of Chinese New Year, so this blog is actually not about that, haha! Whether you love or hate Wikipedia, here is an article on Wiki about Chinese New Year.
What I am going to blog about is about my own experience with Chinese New Year. Ever since I can remember, my family celebrated Chinese New Year every year. Since Charlotte didn't have a large Chinese community in the 80's and early 90's, we just kind of did our own thing which is mainly eating the New Year's Eve meal and eating the meal to commence New Year. I don't recall exactly what we ate, but I do remember eating a lot of the food.
I remember my grandmother was very Buddhist, so she would burn paper money and paper clothes to the ancestors. Incense would also be burned to the ancestors prior to the us eating New Year's meal. The meal we ate was actually given to the ancestors first. So, in a pretend way, I would imagine my great-great-great-many-greats grandfathers/mothers/uncles/aunts would come down and eat it, but not really. Cuz you know, ghosts don't really eat our earthly foods. Once the incense is burned, we eat the meal.
There were a lot of crazy things my grandmother would tell me NOT to do on New Year's Day: don't wash your hair, don't cut your hair, don't sweep/mop the floor, don't wash your clothes, don't throw away trash, don't shower (although in later years, we did shower [without the hair washing], because you know, if you've been cooking up to your New Year's meal, you would be stinky, and if you do sports in the winter, you would want to shower and I think that was the only exception for us grown up). The thought is that you do not want to throw away good luck and fortune on the very first day of the New Year. And believe it or not, to this day, I don't do any of these things. What you can do is wish everyone a Happy New Year, good luck, good fortune and a prosperous year.
Back then, Charlotte didn't have a large Chinese community, a Buddhist temple, lion dances, etc. Even now that we do have a lot of Chinese people here in Charlotte, in terms of where we all live, we are a bit scattered around the Charlotte area. We don't have a Chinatown, so there is not a central place for us to gather for shopping, eating, and social events. (Do we need one? Eh, maybe that is more complicated to think about.) Today, we do have a few Chinese churches and ministries in Charlotte, a Buddhist temple/community, maybe a few Chinese language schools (although I haven't heard from these groups it in a long time), and probably a Chinese student group at the local university in Charlotte, but I think because my dad has been here for so long, we've kind of celebrate more with family and a few friends. At the local Asian grocery stores, there are lion dances held outside in the parking lot. And yes, Charlotte has a lion dance group (as well as a dragon boat group - for a different holiday).
I have been to Hong Kong around Chinese New Year. In early 2019, my dad, brother, and I actually went after the 15th day, so Hong Kong was still decorated with Chinese New Year stuff like red banners and lanterns. I would actually like to go to Hong Kong/China around this time from New Year's Eve until the 15th day, just to see how folks really celebrate in China. Or maybe even going to New York City or San Francisco, two large cities known for their Chinatowns.
Well, that's it for my growing up here in Charlotte. Kind of boring but growing up in a Southern city without a Chinatown, that's kind of how we do things here.
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