CHINESE NEW YEAR SOON

The new year starts in less than two weeks, and in preparation for that, stalls are cropping up along Stockton Street selling the necessary things. Red packets, new clothes, new years cake (年糕 'nin gou'). Tangerines and oranges are in abundant supply. Soon also, one would expect, daffodils and blossoming plum branches.


春節
['Chun jit'. Spring festival.]

The year starts on January 25th. in 2020. Traditionally, people welcome it with a family dinner the evening before, after cleaning house and hanging lucky scrolls and plastering auspicious characters on doors. In China, travel madness will begin several days ere then, as people set off to get back to their kin in distant provinces in time. Chaos will have ensued at many train stations, with huge masses of passengers, and delays.

Here in San Francisco, it is far less hectic.



My apartment mate, a Cantonese American person, has been trying to get all of her siblings on the same page as far as a family dinner, without any significant success. As a Caucasian with no nearby kinfolk, I of course do not intend to do anything at all. Even if I were married to a Chinese person, that evening I would likely be by myself.
I shan't clean house, and I'm working that day, and the next. As well as the Monday following. As far as almost all culturally significant celebrations are concerned, I am a dried-up stick insect and don't care either way.

Chinese New Year is pretty much the same as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentines, but without me grumbling or making snide comments.


Some dishes which are traditional, which I may or may not think of preparing:

Fatty pork and hard-boiled eggs (滷蛋紅燒豬肉 'lou daan hung siu chyu yiuk'). It keeps well, and goes great over rice. Arhat vegetarian dish (羅漢齋 'lo hon chai'), which is traditional, and can be quite good. And especially dried oysters with pork and hair vegetable 好事發財 ('ho si fat choi').
That last, in a cantonese-speaking environment, is a must.

There are also several other very appropriate dishes (described here: Lucky Foods), but I am less vested in them, and again, I am Caucasian, with no family in the area. So no. Not going to bother.

No gok jai (角仔), no lo hei (撈起).

Yes, I'll probably have dumplings at some point, and also noodles for good luck and long life. Plus a nice fish. Fish has a propitious connotation.


What I'm really looking forward to is the fireworks.
Several weeks of explosions.




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