Year of the Rat: A New Cycle Begins
As Chinese New Year traditions are lost and forgotten in the rush of modern life, a few individuals and organizations are working to keep those traditions alive
By Kerry Miller
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Old traditions belonging to Chinese New Year are almost becoming a thing of the past, particularly here in Hawaii, where westernization has crept into the lives of many younger generations of Chinese. With the Chinese New Year festivities already lighting up Honolulu’s Chinatown for the Year of the Rat, local families and Chinese organizations are getting into the spirit to keep these traditions alive.
Duane Pang, a fourth-generation Chinese American, recalls how lanterns used to be hung outside stores, and to prepare for the new year’s meal, his grandmother would pound mochi rice. As a young boy, Pang himself remembers helping his grandmother by grating coconut.
“Now I guess it’s just fast track. They (some Chinese families) don’t want to do all of this. It’s just too much involvement. They’ll cook the traditional foods, but the preparation of all those other things, no way. I had to grate coconut when I was a young kid. Now you just buy the packet; it’s not the same. That’s almost dead here. The most people do in Hawaii is decorate their house, even that I think they’re even getting away from. The next generation, they just do everything Western, or American style,” says Pang.
Pang is in charge of the Wah Kong Temple in Liliha and is the head instructor of the lion dance group, the Kuo Min Tang Physical Culture Association. His group teaches kung fu twice a week, and plays a big part in the annual Chinese New Year festivities in Chinatown. One tradition, which Pang says had to go away because of laws prohibiting it, is the lighting of firecrackers.
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“At 12 o’clock we used to burn incense to worship heaven and earth, then we’d open the door and put firecrackers out; you can’t do that nowadays. Only Chinese would do this, and then your neighbors would be cursing you,” he laughs.
According to Pang, a majority of the Chinese in the Honolulu area are of Cantonese descent. They practice Guang Kung traditions, for example, such as serving tea to your elders on Chinese New Year’s Day, along with eating Chinese sweet meats.
“That’s the first thing you do in the morning, you see your elders. I come to my mother like at 2 in the morning,” he recalls. “You say, I wish you happy new year (and) that you’re healthy, prosperous. That this custom is dying out is also sad, you know. But then the elders have to give you back money,” he laughs.
On the brighter side, many local Chinese families still enjoy celebrating with a banquet meal called Tin-Nin (to gather together) and preparing traditional foods, as well as cleaning their homes, buying new clothes and paying off old debts.
Traditionally, Pang explains, Chinese New Year Day is a vegetarian day - people are not supposed to kill or cut anything, which would explain why most of the traditional foods are not of the meat persuasion (not including sweet meats, of course). For example, there’s nin-gau, a new year’s pudding that’s round and sticky because, Pang says, it’s supposed to symbolize families “sticking” together. Also, there’s jin-dui, a Chinese doughnut that, too, is round, and comes with a special saying about filling your house with jade and gold. Pang does not eat this, but many Chinese eat arrowroot, which is like a round water plant. The tip of the root is placed in the water, and it’s symbolic so you can have male off-spring. Other foods include fatchoy (a freshwater seaweed), oysters and lettuce, to promote wealth.
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“They’re all symbolic,” says Pang of the foods. “In the household, they (families) stack a plate of tangerines or oranges in a pyramid because they’re gold in color, so they want their house to be filled with gold. The last day of the year at the Tin-Nin banquet we have to eat a whole fish. The head and tail will be served. The word fish in Chinese means “to have surplus.”
In Pang’s own family, he adds, “we do all the religious things, and we have the family dinner, we eat jai and we serve tea. In the house, we have to put a pair of tangerines and a pair of lisee (red money
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