Lunar New Year and Learning to Embrace My Heritage

By: Allyssa Lessinger

Growing up, Chinese New Year was a time for me to begrudgingly talk to extended family, hide from conversations with my mother’s friends, and to enjoy good food and hongbao, or Chinese red envelopes filled with money. However, as I grew up, I began to embrace my Chinese heritage, one that I had long felt to be a burden, something that made me different from many of my peers. I started to realize that for far too long, I had felt embarrassed by my culture and its different customs, and Chinese New Year had felt like a further expression of these feelings. Now, I realize that my culture, including customs like Lunar New Year, make me unique, it was a part of me that I started to embrace. 

Now, I recognize that Chinese New Year is a time for me to connect to my culture and a time where I can learn more about my heritage. I grew up listening to the Chinese folktale that said the first Chinese New Year occurred when a monster invaded a town, so the townspeople lit up fireworks, decorated their houses in red, and pounded on drums to scare the monster away. From there, it evolved into the wonderful celebration we know today.

As some of you may know, the start of the Lunar New Year was this past Friday. Though some cultures have different names for it, Lunar New Year is a holiday that is celebrated by 1.5 billion people around the world. My family and I specifically celebrate Chinese New Year because we are Chinese, but other ethnicities, like Korean and Vietnamese, call Lunar New Year by a different name. This year, celebrating was slightly different, due to the coronavirus pandemic. We didn’t get together with a large amount of family or visit many family friends. Instead, my family celebrated by ourselves, but participated in the same traditions. Although it wasn’t as large of a celebration as usual, I was still appreciative of the time we spent together. 

Something that has been taught to me over the years is that everything has symbolism in Chinese New Year, including the food, the decorations, and the traditions. The red envelopes filled with money symbolize prosperity, wealth, and good luck in the new year. For the food, we ate a whole fish on Lunar New Year. The word for fish in Chinese sounds like the Mandarin word for “leftovers,” so eating fish means that you will have plenty of food and wealth left over for the next year. This year, just like previous years, we made homemade dumplings because the shape of dumplings is similar to that of gold nuggets, which means that you will be wealthy in the new year. Also, when pushing the two sides of the dumpling dough together when making them, it reminds people of friendship & family togetherness. One of my favorite dishes is long noodles, which stands for long life. One of the many superstitions that circulate during the Lunar New Year is that you can’t cut the noodles, or else you will either cut short your luck, cut off a friendship, or shorten your life. Even the fruit has its own meaning, the oranges symbolize good fortune because the word for orange in Mandarin sounds similar to the word for “wealth.”

Something that had especially interested me this year was learning about my mother’s experience with Chinese New Year, since she was born in China and spent her whole childhood there, immigrating to the United States when she was about my age now. My mother talked fondly about her own family’s celebrations, saying, “Growing up, we would make dumplings and light up firecrackers in the courtyard of our house and on the street. The family would all sit together, eating a lot of snacks all through the night. Everyone would be so happy. We would visit relatives on the days following New Year's Eve and watch celebration shows on TV. We were very poor, so we didn’t get any hongbao, but I still loved the holiday because it was such a festive time.” I asked her to share her favorite part of Chinese New Year, and she said, “My favorite part was lighting up firecrackers with my friends and eating the food we normally didn’t get to eat, like meat. The fireworks were very fun because I was with my sister and friends who were all out on the street. Our entire family was together, which was a special time because my dad was usually somewhere else during the school year.” When asked about her favorite part now, she replied, “Teaching my daughter our traditions and being with loved ones is my favorite part now. I learned more about certain aspects of Chinese New Year now because I want to pass this tradition on to you. My parents never taught me any of the fables or the stories about the Chinese zodiac. I only learned it because I wanted to tell you the stories. I’m so happy that you are now enjoying this part of your heritage.”