Jesse Lin 0:24
This week, we’re going to talk about the new year for us, Asian folks, Chinese New Year, we want to share with you everything we know, which is not al ot about all the different traditions, food sayings, all that jazz that comes with Chinese New Year. So to kick it off, first of all, this year is the year of the ox. So hopefully we’ll have a very strong related year with great outcomes as the year goes on. Angela, what’s your zodiac?
Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)
Angela Lin 1:03
I’m a horse. So it’s something about like having a lot of energy. And like, just to backtrack a little first of all, Happy Chinese New Year because today is the beginning of Chinese New Year. And it lasts for 15 days. So today’s the first day and Jesse and I are wearing what red we own. So yeah, neither of us is wearing a super auspicious shade of red. Yeah, but this is just the best we can do. So you know, deal with it.
Jesse Lin 1:39
That shade of red is very daring, the auspicious shade of red.
Angela Lin 1:44
Yeah, seriously, who wears that? And I’m like, a normal basis. Not that many.
Jesse Lin 1:48
No, thank you.
Angela Lin 1:49
Yeah. But yeah, I’m a horse. I don’t know. It’s like what you think of a horse like it runs around? It’s like adventurous and and like doing shit. How about you?
Jesse Lin 2:01
I am a sheep and or go depending on who you use to translate. I think that in general, this sign is just supposed to be very auspicious. Like lucky. I don’t know if there are any other like specific traits related to a goat, or a sheep. I do one fun fact about me and my Zodiac is that I don’t actually like lamb or sheep or goat very much.
And cuz you’re a carnivore?
Yeah, well, no, I like meat.
Angela Lin 2:34
I mean, sorry. Wow, I can’t use words today. I meant cannibal. Like your own people.
Jesse Lin 2:41
Yes, I can’t, I cannot cannibalize my own animal. So, you know, that’s very anecdotal. anecdotal, but I’ve always attributed that to the fact that I am sign of the sheep and so I cannot eat my own spiritual animal.
Angela Lin 2:57
You know, I feel that because when Ramon and I lived in Japan last year or two years ago, I can’t keep track of time, but anyways, previously, some some places specialize in horsemeat. And obviously, it’s like very well prepared and like done by chefs that know what they’re doing. And it’s supposed to taste good, but I’m like, I can’t eat a horse. I’m a horse. Like, I’m not gonna eat my own kind.
Jesse Lin 3:27
It’s just, it’s a little bit weird. I do. I definitely feel bad for the people who are like very common signs like, ox, chicken, like, you kind of have to eat those things. But for me, I’d never really could I didn’t really like the taste of, and I still don’t really like the taste of..
Angela Lin 3:44
Well lamb is like, an on the fence kind of thing. Sorry, I love lamb. So I love eating your people. folly. Um, but I looked up the ox, because I feel like I was a little bit confused, like, okay, so there are these 12 zodiac signs. And every year we cycle through different zodiac sign, but like, what does it even mean to be the year of blank, right, like? So first of all, the ox is known for being faithful, diligent, persistent, obliging and sympathetic. And this is largely due to the legend in which the like zodiac signs came from, where like the Jade Emperor tasked all these animals to like, you know, win a race and whoever came in, you know, the place that you placed in the race determined like your order in the Zodiac cycle, and the ox was definitely going to be first and then this shady ass rat hid on his head and like, jumped off right at the end so that he was first so the ox was diligent, and obliging and sympathetic towards the fact that the rat couldn’t get past the river and then got friggin you know, gypped at the end because the rats sneaky. Well, okay, anyway, so happy here if the ox especially to you ox signs. But beyond being you know beyond talking about the zodiacs, we wanted to get into everything about Chinese Lunar New Year, because to be honest, Jesse and I knew very little about this topic, up until right before we recorded this episode. And honestly, I kind of feel like, I’m hoping it’s not just us, like, I kind of feel like, especially for a lot of these big holidays, even outside of Asian culture, like big holidays, you often forget where or you never really knew where the origins came from. Because you focus on like, you know, the specific traditions that are still practiced, or like the foods or eating or whatever, but you don’t actually know the origin story. So I’m giving us a little break that we didn’t know this ahead of time. But we thought it would be fun to teach you guys or remind you guys, if you already knew all this stuff of kind of like the history of where it came from, and like, what a bunch of the most common traditions mean. So I think I can kick it off with like, where did even this concept of guo nian, which means like crossing the new crossing the year or like, you know, passing the New Year come from? Well, so first of all, Chinese New Year has been celebrated for 3800 years. Like, is that frickin insane? Or what?
Jesse Lin 6:41
That is pretty crazy.
Angela Lin 6:42
I always compare everything to the, to the age of the United States as a country, and I’m like we haven’t, we’re only a couple of hundred years old, and like, this tradition from China has existed for almost 4000 hours, you know, so it’s freaking insane. But so there’s, you know, many legends, but it did start originally as like a more religious, like sacrificing to God sacrificing to your ancestors kind of ritualistic holiday. And the legend is that there used to be this monster that looked kind of like a lion, so a lion like monster that lived in the depths of the ocean. And this monsters name was Nian, which means a year in Chinese. And every year, this monster would live, you know, all year long in the depths of the ocean, except for the night before the New Year, where it would like come up and like wreak havoc on everything and eat livestock and people and everyone was just like terrified, until some old man randomly figured out that this monster was afraid of a couple things. So one is the color red, which is why we’re wearing red. And it’s also why people post like, you know, those lucky sayings that are printed on red paper in their houses and outside their houses and stuff. Over the New Year, it’s also afraid of loud noises. So he supposedly had burned bamboo, which I guess crackles when it’s burnt. So it was like the earliest version of firecrackers. And by doing all these things, he was able to ward off and protect himself at least from from Nian. And so that’s also where so guo nian is essentially like, you know, getting past, Nian this monster. And this is also where the lion dance lion and Dragon Dance like tradition came from is like when you go when you see in like Chinatown, or wherever you’re seeing, like these lion dances, it’s supposedly recreating, you know, there’s loud noises and like firecrackers going off. It’s like recreating the warding off of Nian and sending him back into the depths of the seed, which is cool. I like that. Well, what did you find?
Jesse Lin 9:17
Well, basically, yeah, that’s the same thing for the general idea of why it’s called Guo Nian. And what I found is that there’s like, there are many parts of the tradition that rely on words sounding kind of the same or similar, which is really funny. It’s just kind of a play on play on words. So there was this thing that I was looking at that was like, what not to bring to a Taiwanese home during Chinese New Year. And obviously, like many of these things, as I said, like you would never bring to anybody’s home period, but I guess people do for some reason. But the first thing was like four of anything because the letter Four sounds like Si, which means death in Chinese. So therefore, like anything that you bring in fours is not lucky because of that. It seems like something really small. But I feel like when you’re able to recognize something like that people are like, Oh, yeah, good on you. I think it’s also it like the plan words is also really fun in a sense, because in another sense, it’s also very literal. Like we were talking about. Guo Nian like, I mean, literally is like the literal translation of like, passing or surviving this creature. And like, I never even thought that that was just exactly what it meant. Like, you always think you know, your Chinese stuff like this stuff that we used to read from Confucius.
Angela Lin 10:46
Yeah, it’s funny. I also found that so obviously, while in a previous episode, when I had my dad on, I think we talked about Chinese New Year a little bit and he’s like, what do you guys even remember about Chinese New Year and we’re both just like the money I don’t know. The red envelopes right? And so I found the origin of that as well. So the official name of like, these red envelopes are like gifting of money in Chinese is Yāsuìqián. And suì was the name of another monster. It’s all about them monsters up in here. Yeah, some demon who was obsessed with kids and torturing kids in their sleep the night before New Year’s. So apparently the money thing came from that there was like some family who had money and they wanted to save their kids. So they gave him eight coins. And the thing I read didn’t specifically go into the eight but to Jesse’s point of like, you know numbers and words having double entendre type shit eight is a lucky number in Chinese for those who don’t already know because eight is ba and fa is like you know, the you know bringing money like wealth and welcoming wealth into your life like fa-fa-fa , so eight is a really lucky number. So anyways, this guy gave his child eight gold coins to play with at night to like, keep him awake so that he wouldn’t fall asleep. And then he when he did lie down he had put the eight coins into folded into some red paper and put it under his pillow. And so when the demon came to touch the child’s head, he like knocked open the red paper and the coins shown this like super strong light onto the demon and like warded it away. And I don’t know, this was like, not well explained in the story that I read, but the coins were apparently fairies. Like they were actually fairies that were protecting the kid – anyway. So So now because of that legend, it’s you know, you’re like protecting your children and like bringing good fortune by gifting them these red envelopes of money.
Jesse Lin 13:26
Okay, a few things there. First of all, this is like, I love this tale because it’s very similar to the other ones where it just shows where we get all like a lot of our drive from this is like the most Scrooge McDuck capitalistic story ever the money saves you from the monster The second thing is I thought because I remember when we did the red envelopes my mom told me Yāsuìqián was like money you refer to it that way when you’re giving it to someone younger than you but as a person receiving it you still consider it a Hóngbāo and not Yāsuìqián but maybe I’m wrong
Angela Lin 14:09
Maybe that’s because the legend is about protecting children. So when you’re giving it to younger people, that’s where it’s the killing you know? Well Ya is like to, you know, press down on yeah, you’re like squashing this demon Suì.
Jesse Lin 14:27
Well, let’s talk about a big part of Chinese New Year, which is the getting together and having of the food. The food is very important because there’s like a few traditional things that we typically always eat during Chinese New Year. I will start with one of them. The first thing that I think that’s most common to see is fish because there’s even a phrase idiom, phrase or idiom tied to this which will let you guys know about later, but the fish is like it’s always there. And it just represents the same thing. Like it’s very auspicious. The idea that you have fish and you eat it means that you’ll be lucky every year and have like extra surpluses every year. And there’s some like funny rules related to how the dish needs to be placed. And I actually didn’t know any of these things, but and I can’t even remember how it was done when I was a kid. But I feel like these are things probably like even some of the older Auntie’s and stuff. Like, especially like our parents and stuff may or may not follow, because I’ve never remembered them mentioning any of them. But they’re things like related to the position of the fish where the head needs to be placed towards distinguished guests or elders as a sign of respect. You can only enjoy the fish after the after the person who eats the fish head. The person with a fish head is directed to eats first, and you shouldn’t move the fish like you shouldn’t shift it around like move its head and tail. You shouldn’t flip that like stuff like that.
Angela Lin 16:12
There’s no like pass me the fish. That’s allowed.
Jesse Lin 16:15
Yeah, the fish stays there. You just you go to the fish for the fish.
Angela Lin 16:22
That’s funny. I feel like I vaguely actually recall at least one time in my life some one practicing this these rules when I’ve eaten the fish. Another food thing that I think most people know if you’re Asian is noodles. Because noodles represent your life. So like the longer the noodle, the better. And most people know this, but when you eat the noodles, you’re not supposed to bite the noodle, like cut it, cut it in half or whatever because if you cut or bite the noodle, you’re like shortening your life. So you want to like slurp them noodles up all in one go or you know, slurp it all up so it’s in your mouth and then you can chew it.
Jesse Lin 17:13
Something else that I think everyone’s really familiar with is dumplings. Dumplings represent basically wealth and fortune because you can pinch it in a shape that looks like ye old Chinese money. I don’t know if you guys have seen the old Chinese money but like if you’ve ever had the Asian version of what’s that? What’s that Jewish gold candy?
Angela Lin 17:38
Oh, I don’t know. I know what you’re talking about. But I don’t know what it’s called.
Jesse Lin 17:45
It’s it’s like the Chinese equivalent of the Jewish gold money we have the chocolates in the shape of like ye old Chinese money and you can you can make dumplings into that kind of shape as well. So eating them basically represents eating like wealth and you will make more money the following year.
Angela Lin 18:03
Can we talk about how gross those chocolates were? They were like not really chocolate I feel like chocolate
Jesse Lin 18:10
Yeah, it was like chocolate with like river clay or something it was really bad
Angela Lin 18:16
I feel like because we were in America there was some like westernization there because I did get those when I was growing up but there was also the I got some chocolate coins like Western coins…
Jesse Lin 18:30
Wait for Chinese New Year?
Angela Lin 18:30
Yeah, I’d get it like in an envelope like a red envelope or something. Oh, cuz I don’t know if you got this but like besides money I feel like it was also common growing up this is now not going into like official traditions just like what I remember from growing up but I would also get like I don’t know what Chinese school or whatever. They would give us red envelopes, but they’re not. Oh, actually, you know what every year they would give us those half dollar coins. You remember that?
Jesse Lin 18:59
The Sacagawea coins?
Angela Lin 19:00
Isn’t that $1? There was it was like FDR isn’t FDR or Teddy Teddy. Teddy Roosevelt, right? I don’t know. Anyways, it was like giant coins. I feel like they gave us every year but it would be like that and then some of the gold coins and then you know what? Forget the gold coins they don’t taste good. The the candy I loved was that that pink candy that was wrapped in the like shiny red foil. You don’t know what I’m talking about. It was like vaguely strawberry flavor but not really. It was a hard candy?
Jesse Lin 19:37
Now that you said strawberry it sounds more familiar but
Angela Lin 19:39
On the outside the the like foil is like red with like a gold probably like fa or some other lucky Chinese word.
Jesse Lin 19:48
Okay, okay. I think I recall what you’re talking about
Angela Lin 19:51
And it was a hard pink candy that was like, and it was ribbed a little bit you know, I’m talking about
Jesse Lin 19:56
Okay, I was like I think I think I remember I also remember as part of the envelopes they would give you like when they had nothing to give you like money, they would just give you like a blast. Like do you remember when we get those from temple and it would just be like a slip of paper and you’re like, I can’t read it.
Angela Lin 20:17
That’s what happens when it’s a bunch of parents who are gifting nothing to their children who grew up in America. Yes.
Jesse Lin 20:26
Oh, do you have any? Like, have you made dumplings with your family?
Angela Lin 20:30
You know what? No, because my mom is sorry, mom. My mom is not that good at cooking. So no, I haven’t. But my my aunt who used to teach us in our Confucius lessons in our temple. She’s really good at making dumplings. So I don’t think I got to make it with her. But I’ve like been lucky enough to have eaten her handmade dumplings, which were again, delicious. How about you?
Jesse Lin 20:55
I don’t specifically recall an instance where I was making dumplings with my grandparents. But I feel like there had to be at least once where we did it because my like, my dad’s grandparents, I would. They’re definitely what I would call Chuántǒng. They’re like super old school. But I do very clearly remember making another special kind of food the Tāngyuán and we called it in Taiwanese wan-ah. But also, we didn’t make it specifically. I don’t remember making it specific for Chinese New Year’s. We always made it for like, Mid Autumn Festival. I think it was savory. Not sweet.
Angela Lin 21:34
Blasphemy. Interesting. Well, yeah, I don’t think I’ve made it. I’ve never made dumplings with my family. But I’ve made it in, in like school with, you know, like other Chinese American people who were who wanted to celebrate and were better cooks than I was at the time I made some with them. That was fun. But beyond the currency related thing, I also saw that another reason why dumplings are like a traditional thing that you make over Chinese New Year is that it takes a lot of time to make dumplings. So it’s an excuse to spend time with your family and likes pass many hours or whatever, making them so that you cross over into the new year together. So yeah, that was nice.
Jesse Lin 22:27
It’s just like that scene in crazy, crazy, rich Asians are all making dumplings together. It’s really a warming cute.
Angela Lin 22:34
And then they shit on each other for how ugly their dumplings are? Yeah.
Jesse Lin 22:39
Absolutely.
Angela Lin 22:43
Well, one other thing I found, which, like I had always just like, brushed off. I was like, I know, this is the thing, but I don’t care enough to look it up. I finally looked it up for you. Why is it called Lunar New Year? And why does it keep changing every year? Like, why is it not all on the same day, every year? Well, this also dates back one zillion years ago, which is that way back when in China, Lunar New Year was or sorry, lunar calendar was the the main calendar. So basically, it’s a calendar where it’s based off of the lunar cycles. So like literally we you know, the moon and I looked it up and one lunation, which is a word is about 29 and a half days, so every month is either 29 or 30 days. And because it fluctuates like this, in comparison to our like, you know, calendar year that we go by lunar year is only 354 days. So that’s why there’s this like difference. And technically, so the calendar year that we go by is called the Gregorian calendar. And it goes by the solar cycles. So that’s why it’s different, because we’re basing it off of different things in the sky. And China was all about the lunar stuff until in 1949, very recent, very recent, it was under the Communist regime because..
Jesse Lin 24:22
I was going to say it’s Mao
Angela Lin 24:23
Mao don’t let you do anything. He not only got rid of the lunar calendar and was like we’re going by this Western calendar. He also was like, Yyu can’t celebrate Chinese New Year anymore. Because Yeah, I mean, I guess it makes sense because during that time, he was like, screw Confucius screw all this like, you know, literature and religion and all that stuff. So he was getting rid of all that. So I guess it makes sense, but then in late 90s, it came back. So China was like, Okay, okay, we can bring the shit back, but they like rebranded it it’s kind of weird, I never thought about it until I was looking all this stuff up but they rebranded it as Spring Festival. So instead of specifically calling it like, New Year, it’s Chūnqiū jiē which which is Yeah, I you know, we’ve heard that too I guess. But it’s supposed to be you know, you can call it one or the other but they deemed it Spring Festival and it’s like officially a week long holiday where you get to take time off to travel to your family to celebrate the New Year.
Jesse Lin 25:34
Shall we move into our fortune cookie clothes where we teach you guys three common phrases that you will hear if you are at a Chinese or Taiwanese or Mandarin Asian speaking household during the new years.
Angela Lin 25:52
And that you should liberally say to everyone Yes, and you’ll be loved and adored. And they’ll be very pleasantly surprised.
Jesse Lin 26:03
Like just say them like your please and thank yous. Like don’t even say please and thank you just say these phrases.
Angela Lin 26:09
It’s better than please and thank you. All right. Well, one of them. You know, I’m going to skip past just saying Happy New Year’s not good. That’s like baseline. So but if you want to know it’s Xīnnián kuàilè , but that is baseline, that’s not even a blessing. You’re just saying Happy New Year, that doesn’t count. The next one is Wànshì rúyì is like a pretty common one. Just like full disclosure, my brain only remembers like two or three of them. But that’s a go to one which means it’s very popular. And it basically means So literally, it means like, you know of a one zillion themes that you are trying to do. May you be successful at them. It’s like anything that you do you’ll you’ll be successful at them.
Jesse Lin 27:06
Interesting, awesome. Well, I have one which is Nián nián yǒuyú and it is dovetails with the fish thing that we were talking about earlier that basically means every year you will have fish literally. Why not? Well, that literal translation is not like you will always be eating fish forever. That sounds awful. But it basically means that you will have the good fortune and the good fortunes that the fish means and that will be brought to you every year so basically like same thing as saying like having good luck good fortune improving yields every year.
Angela Lin 27:47
Improving yields. Just so you know, though technically it’s a different yú so like it’s not the same character.
Unknown Speaker 27:54
Well, it’s yes, but it’s like the play on the words. Yeah,
Angela Lin 27:58
Yes. Just for you Western people. It’s not the words of phrases not say like year year have fish in literal, literal words. Let’s see. What’s the other one? Yeah. Gōngxǐ fācái. It’s is essentially just throwing all the good stuff at you like, congratulations, wealth. play all the things. And if you’re a child, where do you want to act like a child? And what we used to say, every year was Gōngxǐ fācái hong bao na lie – Happy New Year, give me them red envelopes? Yeah. Yeah, well, actually, one thing I want to plug because we always tell you to write us in and we definitely want you to write us in. But one, you know, there were so many things that we could have talked about with this topic. But one thing we didn’t talk about is that way more than Chinese and Taiwanese people celebrate Lunar New Year because China had such an influence on all of Asia essentially right so like Lunar New Year is celebrated by so many different Asian countries and they’re like different traditions and like you know, specific flavors to how you interpret different things and what you’re supposed to do over the Lunar New Year so what would be really fun is if you have different traditions that you’re used to celebrating over Lunar New Year because you are you are Chinese or you’re not Chinese and you have like totally different traditions we’d love if you write us in and tell us what those things are. And reminder that we are still looking for listeners story submissions, so write us in about your experience with either this topic or whatever you want at telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com.