Chinese New Year

Late this January, Chinese students from the university gathered to celebrate the New Year. The reason for this seemingly belated celebration is the varying dates between the Chinese and Western calendars. In 2009, the year of the Ox (based on the Chinese zodiac), Chinese New Year fell on January 26th, and in order to honour this Chinese tradition, four student societies—ABACUS, the Chinese Society the HongKong Society and MSSA—collaborated to organise a Chinese New Year dinner party on January 23rd.

The evening was kicked off with a festive lion dance, a celebratory act that originated because the loud colours of the “lions” and the high level of noise was said to frighten away evil spirits. In line with the coming of the New Year, this was believed to ensure a happy new year.

As those who are familiar with the Chinese New Year traditions would know, a reunion dinner is held on New Year’s Eve where the entire family gathers to welcome the New Year. This dinner is important to many Chinese families because they believe in the significance of the dishes consumed. Some of these dishes include fish (yú), because it is a homophone of the Chinese term for ‘blessing’, and a vegetable called ‘fat choi’ in Cantonese because its name sounds similar to the Chinese term for prosperity. These familiar dishes were served at Zen in their sumptuous eight-course meal, helping to trigger in all of us a distinct sense of nostalgia for home and for familiar customs and traditions.

Even after the final dish was served, the evening’s excitement had not yet come to a close. There was even a raffle draw with many attractive prizes up for grabs. These included iPod Touch, Sony Cybershot digital camera, 5.1 audio speakers, DVD player, printer, iPod Shuffle, champagne, memory storagee dvices, as well as vouchers for Dynasty, Zen, Obento, Kin Yip Hon and Matana hairdressers. This certainly helped to increase the liveliness and festive spirit of the evening as many of us went home with prizes, indicating, indeed, a very auspicious start to the year of the Ox.

This was the first event to be organised since the Christmas break, and it was an overwhelming success and every participant enjoyed themselves thoroughly and visibly, buoyed by the Chinese New Year festivities and the high spirited conversation of the evening. It was the perfect way to usher in the new year.