When Li Mei Ge was a child in south China, she and her parentsobedient to Maoist dictum — never celebrated the Lunar New Year. Now a teacher at the Denver Center for International Studies, Ge says she finds herself discovering aspects of Chinese culture her family never plumbed with they lived in China.
“I never did the New Year traditions my whole life, and I never saw my parents do this either,” Ge said.
“Over here, though, I see in the Asian markets many decorations and other things for the New Year,” she said. “I think they are selling these for the Vietnamese Chinese — the Chinese who long ago moved from China to Vietnam — and for other Chinese in Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, where they kept a lot of the old traditions.”
Her students recently completed research on Chinese Lunar New Year traditions, an exercise that was illuminating for both students and teacher, Ge says.
She does indulge in one ancient New Year tradition: passing out red envelopes to her students and friends.
Customarily, the envelopes held money, a token for a prosperous new year. But Ge’s students are just as happy with the alternative contents of her red envelopes — pieces of a popular Chinese candy called Big Bunny, with striking wrappers and an edible rice-paper lining coating the milk candy inside.
“I can’t afford the money in the envelopes, but the candy is a tradition I have kept with my students for the 15 years I’ve been in Denver Public Schools,” she said.
Assembling a celebration
Ge offers a few other essentials for a festive Chinese New Year celebration:
• Round tray of sweets, including dried fruit and wrapped candy, to foretell a year filled with good things
• The Chinese character for “happiness” hung upside- down on the home front door, to signal the arrival of the happy new year.
• Hanging Chinese couplet banners, poetic portents for a fortunate year.
• Sticky rice cakes, like the carp-shaped cakes sold in many Asian markets, to be sliced, dredged in flour and fried golden in oil before serving; the sticky rice symbolizes togetherness and solidarity, especially family ties.
• Tangerines, pomelos and oranges, with leaves attached, portents of fortune, prosperity and fecundity.
• Hanging paper decorations and candy jars decorated with images of rats, symbols of the animal that denotes the first year of the new lunar calendar cycle. Cartoonish, almost anime-style animals are especially popular.
• Joss paper, available in a plethora of forms, most traditionally white paper with gold or silver foil squares, or rectangles of bamboo paper, or HellBank notes, to burn in honor of ancestors who’ve passed away.
• Joss sticks or incense to burn, also in honor of ancestors.
• Red envelopes containing real currency or sweets.
• Red lanterns, lit by candles or electric light bulbs, to hang on the 15th day of the New Year celebrations, marking the year’s first full moon.
