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February 18, 2007
happy year of the golden piggy!
gung hay fat choy, everyone... happy new year 4704-4705! this is the perfect time to renew all those resolutions you made just a month and a half ago and have already forgotten about. me, i spent the day making my celebratory New Year's food -- steamed pork buns! so yummy! we've already gobbled down half of them. oh char siu bao, how i love you...
and how appropriate to be eating barbequed pork, as this is the Golden Year of the Fire Pig. for those of who haven't been paying attention to those paper placemats from your local Chinese restaurant explaining the twelve-animal zodiac, here's the basics:
New Year's Day is the (deep breath) first day of the second New Moon after the winter equinox. that's why it's different every year. (yes, the Chinese are complicated, but that's why we're so interesting). anyway, the years go in cycles of twelve, with each year represented by an animal. this cycle of twelve is repeated five times, with each time represented by an element, which has different (yin and yang) characteristics. therefore, in a full cycle of sixty years (12 x 5), no two animals are the same, and the last year of the full cycle is the "golden" one.
phew! so here we are at the golden year of a yang fire piggy, which basically means... well, whatever you'd like it to. some say it will be especially prosperous; others say it means there will be a lot of conflicts bad for wealth. (that's the beauty of fortune-telling -- you can be really, really vague -- see two entries ago for a good iTunes-inspired example of what i'm saying.) the one thing my peeps agree on is -- have a baby! apparently kids born in this year will be ultra-super-fortunate...so much so that maternity wards are expected to have a 10% jump in traffic in some parts of Asia. i find this belief suspiciously convenient since last year was supposedly particularly auspicious for weddings...hmmm....
in any case, every Chinese New Year seems to be "lucky" or "prosperous" or "wealthy," mainly because i think these are the favourite words of Chinese people who make New Year's tchotchkes. golden piggy statuettes are selling like hotcakes out there! just wear some red clothes to celebrate, and have another steamed pork bun!
by the way, the stamps pictured above were recently released in China to celebrate the New Year -- apparently they're not only scratch-n-sniff (the front) but also taste like sweet and sour pork when you lick the adhesive back. now if only there was a Nutella commemorative stamp...
Posted by hadashi at February 18, 2007 11:53 AM
Comments
Don't eat too many pork buns cause you're making some with me next weekend!!!
Happy New Year!
Posted by: Marti 
at February 18, 2007 11:35 PM
don't worry...you can never eat "too many" pork buns. if you finish them all, that just means you need to make more!
Posted by: hadashi at February 20, 2007 4:24 PM
Scratch 'n sniff porker stamps? ONLY THE CHINESE WOULD HAVE INVENTED THAT. Oh...sorry. The correct quote is YEAH, THE CHINESE CLEARLY WERE THE FIRST TO INVENT THAT.
It just came to me that "Shau Pork Bun" would be a sweet little nickie-name for a happie chubbie babie.
Posted by: ernli at May 21, 2007 2:18 PM
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