It all started with a rice-paste fish.
My sister came home recently with the weirdest snack I'd ever seen. It was a blob of glue-coloured goo, shaped and painted to look like a goldfish. Apparently, it was edible. It was cute, she said, and was perfect for Chinese New Year.
Firecrackers I could understand, but Jello fish? Where'd that come from in our culture?
Feb. 14 is Chinese New Year, which is also Valentine's Day. The coincidence is appropriate, since the holidays share many romantic links. To find out about them, and that fish, I decided to investigate.
A fiery relationship
I turned to Helen Cheung as my guide. A long-time volunteer with the Edmonton Chinatown Multicultural Centre, she organized about 500 people to run the Lunar New Year's Extravaganza at West Edmonton Mall last weekend.
2010 is the year of the tiger, Cheung says, which is the third animal of the Chinese lunar calendar. "The tiger is a symbol of fortitude, courage, strength and stamina," she says, and people born this year will be dynamic and full of life.
Every New Year's celebration starts with weeks of preparation, Cheung says, most of which are related to the Kitchen God.
The tale of the Kitchen God is one of love, forgiveness and regret. According to Micha Lindemans, author of the Encyclopaedia Mythica, it begins when a man named Zhang Lang dumps his virtuous wife for a younger woman. The heavens drop a trainload of bad luck on him in retaliation, and he loses his girl, money and sight.
His wife spots him on the street and serves him his favourite food. Lang, not recognizing her, starts crying and tells her his life story. His wife tells him to open his eyes, and lo! He can see again.
Unfortunately, Zhang is so ashamed of his behaviour that, upon seeing his wife, he immediately throws himself into the hearth. Much burning ensues. His wife puts a plaque above the hearth to remember him by, which became the plaque to the Kitchen God.
Traditional Chinese homes will have a plaque or paper over their fireplace to the Kitchen God as a result. The god, often depicted as a bearded, moustached official, supervises the household and reports to the Jade Emperor on their performance each New Year. The plaque is burned prior to the end of the year, sending the god to heaven, and replaced on the second day of the new year, symbolizing his return.
Families want to leave a good impression on the god, Cheung says, so they spend the first three weeks paying off debts, cooking, and cleaning house. They also offer the god sticky, sweet dumplings.
"It's believed that if the Kitchen God tastes the dumplings, everything that comes out of his mouth will be sweet." And if that doesn't work, she continues, the dumplings will glue the god's mouth shut so he can't say anything bad.
Beastly love
Most North Americans are familiar with the acrobatic, lettuce-spewing lion dance that happens on New Year's. It's based on the old tale of a monster that savaged a village every year, says Jason Kwong, who performs the dance with the Edmonton Hung Mun Athletic Club. The villagers fought back by creating their own monster: a lion with a phoenix-shaped horn, unicorn ears and a dragon's beard, with an evil-proof mirror on its head. Backed up by loud noises, firecrackers and lots of red — all common demon deterrents — they frightened the beast away.
The dance today is used at many public events, such as the opening of a new store, and serves to show off martial arts skills. It ends when the lion devours a bunch of lettuce and spits it everywhere, blessing it and everyone smacked by the salad.
The dragon dance is less common, Kwong says, since it requires about 20 people, but is a little more romantic. The dance depicts a colourful, serpentine dragon as it loops through the clouds chasing a stylized pearl, and is usually performed only at major events like New Year's.
The dragon and the phoenix represent the partners in a relationship, Kwong says, and the pearl represents the dragon's life force. "Once the dragon finds the pearl and finds the right phoenix, it will give the phoenix that pearl." That exchange symbolizes the everlasting love in a relationship.
Romancing the moon
Chinese New Year runs for 15 days, and the last day — the Lantern Festival — is a bit like Valentine's Day. China had a strict curfew prior to the 1850s, says Linda Tzang, cultural communities curator at the Royal Alberta Museum, and this was the only night where women were allowed to socialize in public. Residents would traditionally raise colourful lanterns on this night as they headed out for dates, watching for men and women clever enough to solve the riddles often hung from those lanterns.
There's also a romantic legend behind the festival, Tzang says. Long ago, the maid Yuan Xiao came to Dongfang Shuo, the brilliant advisor, with a problem. She missed her family, and didn't know how to get in touch with them.
Shuo had an idea. Disguising himself as a fortune-teller, he spread a rumour that the gods were angry and would burn the city to the ground on the 15th day of the first lunar month. The emperor heard the rumour, and asked Shuo to do something.
He had an idea, of course: the emperor should order everyone to set off firecrackers and light colourful lanterns that night to make the gods think the city was already on fire. The emperor did so. When Xiao's parents came to town to check out the pretty lights, they found her standing under a big lantern with her name on it.
The festival also falls on the night of the year's first full moon, making it extra romantic. The Chinese believe in an Old Man on the Moon who regulates marriages, writes author Tan Huay Peng, and binds all couples at birth with an invisible red thread. His influence is thought to be particularly strong during the full moon. Single men and women would pray for love on this night by tossing oranges in the ocean while chanting, "Good oranges I throw, good spouse will follow."
Out with the old?
Many New Year's traditions have fallen out of favour. Chinese women can now date year-round, so that's taken some of the spark out of the Lantern Festival. Kitchen God worship is pretty rare in North America, as are firecracker displays.
But almost everyone still gets together on New Year's Eve to have a huge family dinner, Cheung says, where they eat good-luck foods such as dumplings for togetherness, long noodles for long life, and fish, which sounds like the word "surplus" in Cantonese.
I suppose a fish-shaped cake is a logical extension of this tradition. I just hope it tastes better than it looks.
China's Valentine's Day
The Seven Sisters' Festival is the Chinese equivalent to Valentine's Day, says Linda Tzang, cultural communities curator at the Royal Alberta Museum. It falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month (Aug. 16 this year).
The tale behind it tells of a cowherd who fell in love with the seventh daughter of the emperor of heaven. They married, but were so in love that they started neglecting their duties - cloud-weaving in the daughter's case. The emperor disapproved, and booted them to the stars Altair and Vega, separated by the Milky Way. Now, they can only meet once a year on this day - the day when those stars are at their highest point in the sky - crossing the Milky Way on a bridge of birds.
The holiday is fairly obscure in North America, but is still observed in parts of China. Traditionally, author Tan Huay Peng writes, young women would pray for good husbands on this day, and make offerings of weaving and cosmetics to the Seven Sisters. These offerings would include tiny shoes, necklaces and combs for the sisters, as well as a little bridge for the daughter and cowherd to cross over.
