Opinion / Is it time to break with Lunar New Year traditions? Not if you want to have a prosperous Year of the Ox, according to Lung Siu-kwan – and after 2020, who can blame us for trying?

Feb 12 , 2021

Traditions, such as the prosperity toss, abound in Chinese culture at Lunar New year, but not everyone is au fait with all of them. Photo: Getty Images

There are so many customs associated with Lunar New Year that, for those who didn’t grow up with them, it can be hard to know where to begin. Who knew I’d be given the cold shoulder by my friend’s entire family after gifting them a set of kitchen knives? Who could have foreseen I’d lose everything on the stock market after shaving my head on Lunar New Year’s day? Plenty of people, apparently.

Nowadays, a rudimentary search for “LNY traditions” dredges up a barrage of listicles long and short that discuss new year practices and their origins. Conventions around what you should and shouldn’t eat, when you can and cannot do certain chores, and the types of gifts that are considered exceptionally not good to give are numerous.

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The colour red is most definitely a lucky one during Lunar New Year – it certainly brightens things up. Photo: EPA-EFE

“A lot of young people don’t pay much attention to these traditions now,” says Lung Siu-kwan, the Hong Kong singer and actress also known for her work as a Chinese teacher. “It’s a shame because plenty of Chinese Lunar New Year traditions are rather meaningful.” She pauses. “Though I don’t like that you’re not supposed to wash your hair.”

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That particular proscription is based on a homophone – two words that sound the same. Cutting or washing your hair is a no-no at LNY because hair and wealth have similar pronunciations (in Cantonese: faat). Therefore, cutting your hair is akin to cutting your wealth, while washing your hair risks washing riches down the drain. Hence why I had to spend an entire year eating nothing but instant noodles after taking the clippers to my skull.

Lunar New Year is a time of giving and red envelopes filled with money are often given by parents and grandparents to children in the family. Photo: Getty Images

Similarly, while it’s vital to clean your house in the run-up to Lunar New Year, sweeping during the holiday itself not the done thing, as it is akin to brushing wealth out of your life. Given the mess that can be generated during a typical new year celebration, this is a tradition compulsive clean freaks can find hard to follow. Leave sunflower seeds strewn across the floor? Couldn’t be me.

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Sharp things in general, like needles and scissors, should be shunned. There’s both a symbolic and a practical reason for this: sharp things are believed to sever both your ties from others, and also the success that flows from past to future; additionally, in the days when women spent a great deal of time sewing and mending clothes, this convention gave the ladies of the household a welcome break.

You also shouldn’t give sharp objects, such as knives, as gifts. Being an avid chef and knife collector, this aggrieves me personally, but it does explain why I don’t receive lucky money any more. And let’s not get into my watch habit: the words for clock or watch are homophones for attending a funeral, and more to the point, these devices symbolise time running out.

Singer Lung Siu-kwan preparing couplets. Photo: Handout

That brings us to money lending. The English say “neither a borrower nor a lender be,” and this also applies at Lunar New Year: custom dictates that if you lend money at this time, more debtors will line up throughout the year (though presumably if you’re a credit card company or Don Corleone, this is a good thing, right?) Conversely, if you borrow at new year, it is believed you’ll stay in debt.

Handwritten couplets are placed around door frames to bring good luck. Photo: Getty Images

To be on the safe side, if you’re a borrower or a lender, you should get your accounts into the black before the end of the year. “But in my opinion there’s never a good time of year to lend or borrow money,” Lung says pragmatically. And a note for you wise guys and loan sharks: you’re not allowed to demand a debt repayment until the fifth day of the Year of the Ox, capice?

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It seems a large number of new year customs revolve around actions that can either cause you to accrue enormous riches or to go stone broke. “I suggest you buy as many pairs of trousers as possible at new year,” says Lung. Why would that be? Well, fu means rich, and it also means trousers. But she adds a caveat: “make sure the trousers don’t have holes in.” So no ripped designer jeans? “Right. We say fu cyun lung; if your trousers have holes in them, it means you’re poor.” Frankly this sounds a little classist, but fine, I’ll play. Complacently, I scan Google for “Armani trousers sale.”

Above all else, Lunar New Year is about eating well – but there are a few lucky and unlucky traditions to heed here too. Photo: Mott 32.

Of course, the Chinese interpretation of Lunar New Year wouldn’t be Chinese if it didn’t have lots of customs related to food. Meat should be avoided on the first day of the new year. Lung believes this custom is connected not only to Buddhism but to pre-Buddhist Chinese folk religions.

I wonder if this could be viewed as a sort of proto-Veganuary; an attempt to at least begin the year in an ethical way. In the 21st century, this custom has taken on an even greater significance as people limit their meat intake in an effort to reduce their carbon footprint. There’s also a proscription against eating congee. “There’s an idea that if you eat congee you’ll be poor, because that’s what poor people used to eat in the olden days,” Lung says.

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Luckily, the list of things you can eat is fairly extensive: vegetables and fruit have plenty of lucky connotations, so at least you won’t be going without vitamins. Oh, except for pears: those are a homonym for parting. Then there’s cake: in Cantonese, gou can mean “cake” or “high” depending on the tone, so you’ll find savoury cakes like the white carrot lou baat gou and glutinous rice cakes like nin gou on the table. Dumplings, too, are auspicious, being shaped like the traditional gold ingots, called yuanbao, which symbolise wealth. (I admit there’s not much here that’s ideal for the keto enthusiast.)

Everyone wearing red and a smile with plenty of fruit on the table and Chinese characters meaning “wealthy and prosperous” – these guys are doing everything right. Photo: Shutterstock

In my entirely subjective appraisal, I wonder whether these structures around what you can and cannot do are perceived as incompatible with individualist modern life. Could that be why younger people are turning away from more traditional new year’s celebrations? In a globalised – and possibly more Westernised – world that prizes going your own way over all else and scorns following the rules, are such community and family-based customs inevitably doomed?

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For her part, Lung says she’d like to see such traditions carried on.

“It’s a sort of communication between the generations,” she says. “It can strengthen the bonds between family members and give us hope for the future. It’s not just a form of etiquette, but also a way for the past to speak to our present.”

“They can also keep you out of trouble,” she adds.

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Lunar New Year

It’s a great time of year to buy a new pair of Armani trousers, but definitely not to gift a Rolex or a set of luxury steak knives
LNY customs can get complicated and those that didn’t grow up surrounded by them can struggle at this time of year