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| Courtesy: userealbutter.com |
Friday was the first day of the Chinese New Year. Honestly, living in America, especially the Midwest, has kept me out of the loop in terms of the lunar calendar and when Chinese festivals fall. I'm also very hazy on some of the details as well. For example, I had no idea until a couple years ago that Chinese New Year celebrations lasted fifteen days until the Lantern Festival.
I'd love to go back to Asia sometime, particularly Taiwan and China, to celebrate Chinese New Year. I feel just as comfortable in a Chinese environment as I do in the United States. I may not be the stereotypical FOB, drinking bubble tea, singing karaoke, going to dinner parties, only hanging out with Asians all the time, but I do appreciate Chinese culture. I can speak Chinese fairly fluently (or at least I can make myself understood, even if I don't always think of the most efficient way to say things). But again, I wish there was more depth to my knowledge of some of these subjects, and I can see how that would lead some people in college to label me "whitewashed" (though I don't know if these people were aware of these nuances as well. Heck, I can speak Chinese better than a lot of them).
Anyway, in the spirit of Chinese New Year, I wanted to share a story I heard in Chinese history class from when I went to Chinese school way back when. Traditionally, dumplings are eaten during Chinese New Year. There are many reasons why, including the fact that dumplings are shaped like gold ingots and symbolize wealth for a prosperous new year. One of my favorite foods, and even perhaps my most favorite, has been my Dad's dumplings: hand-made dough filled with Lightlife vegetarian ground beef, spinach, vermicelli noodles, shitake mushrooms, baked tofu, ginger, garlic, green onions, soy sauce, and sesame oil, with a dipping sauce of equal parts soy sauce and rice vinegar with a touch of sesame oil. I miss that.
But I wanted to put down this story in writing, to share with everybody else, and so that I can remember it too.
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A long time ago (because all stories start out that way, don't they, or with "once upon a time"), there was a small village near a huge lake in China. Everybody knew each other in this town, and they all lived happily and peacefully the whole year round, except for one time each year: Chinese New Year. Now you would think that this time would be a cause for celebration. After all, Chinese New Year is called the Spring Festival, signifying the start of spring. It's a new beginning for everything. But the residents of this little town could only hope that this was not the ending.
You see, there was a problem that these residents have had to contend with for a long time. This lake that they have lived next to all their lives contained a being that frightened everybody in their right minds. This was a monster, if you will, that nobody could describe, because nobody had ever seen it. In fact, no one would ever dare to meet it, because if you did, the monster would eat you.
There was one time a year that the monster would come out of the lake and into the town, looking for people to feed itself. That time happened to be Chinese New Year. So it was at this time, every year, all the residents of this town would flee up into the mountains and hide in a cave, and only after the monster returned back to the lake for the year would the residents feel safe coming back down and resuming their normal lives.
However, one year, not all of the residents could make it up into the mountains. One old lady had decided to stay back and meet her fate. "I'm old," she said. "I can't make it up the mountain anymore. That journey would be just as bad as staying here and being eaten. You all go ahead. I'll stay back." No matter how much her fellow townspeople tried to change her mind, begging, pleading, she wouldn't budge. So the townspeople had no choice but to leave her behind as they made the long annual trek up the mountain.
After everybody else had left, the old lady went about her daily routine. "Yes, I know I made the right decision," she sighed. "I'm ready. Even if I did go up the mountain, it would have been torture for me. At least being eaten would be quick. No, I'm okay with this." As she was cleaning her house, she heard a knock on the door. She walked to the entrance, expecting to see a monster, and preparing herself for the next journey. So granted she was surprised when she saw a man, weary from his long travels, standing on her stoop.
"Get inside! Quickly!" she hissed, pulling the traveler in and shutting the door. "What are you doing here? You shouldn't be in town right now!"
"I was wondering where everybody was," he replied. "I've knocked on so many doors, and nobody's answered. You're the first person I've seen since I've arrived. What's going on?"
And so the old lady told the traveler the story of what happens each year, of how the monster rises from the lake during Chinese New Year to find people to eat, and because of that how everybody escapes up to a cave in the mountains during this time.
"Well, why aren't you with them?" asked the traveler.
"I'm old. I can't handle the journey anymore. So I sent everybody ahead without me."
"I have an idea, but we'll need to act quickly. First, we're going to need some wood. What I'm going to do is to build a fire in front of your door. I can set off some firecrackers and light some lanterns with that as well. In the meantime, I want you to get some red paper, and I want you to write a New Year's blessing on it. When you're done, I want you to hang it on the outside of your front door. I should be done building the fire by then, and we'll move on to the next step."
So as the traveler gathered wood and started to build a fire on the woman's front stoop, the old lady looked around the house, scrounged up a red-colored scroll and her calligraphy set, and wrote a Chinese New Year's blessing on it. After she hung the scroll on the door and the traveler had built a fire, they went back inside to the kitchen.
"Do you have any meat and vegetables around?" asked the man.
"I have a little bit, just to sustain myself until the monster comes."
"Well, it'll have to do. The next thing we should do is to chop up your meat and vegetables into fine pieces. And not just cut them into small pieces. I want you to mince it quickly, banging your knife with force each time it comes down. And since we're chopping these things so finely, we might as well make dumplings with the meat and vegetables."
So as the man set around to making the dough, the woman got out her meat and vegetables and her biggest cleaver, and set about to chopping furiously. They finished their tasks as night fell, and started assembling the dumplings. A short time later, they sat down to eat their creations.
"Well, this is a nice last meal to have," said the woman.
They didn't talk for a while, concentrating on the delicious dumplings that they had just made, until finally, the woman said: "You should probably get out of here while you still can, before the monster finds you and eats you too."
"I'll be okay. Do you want to know why we did what we did today?"
"I've been wondering that all day. Why did we build a fire, hang up scrolls, and make dumplings? Aren't those just everyday, menial tasks?"
"Well, here's what I was thinking. Red is a harsh color to look at. We have the fire, the scrolls, the firecrackers, and the lanterns. When the monster sees that, he won't want to look at the house anymore. On top of that, we have the firecrackers, and the loud sound you made with your cleaver when you were preparing the filling for the dumplings. Those noises should be able to keep the monster away from your house, and thus we get to live another year."
"Ahh, I see," said the woman. "But why did you have me write on the scrolls?"
"Well, we can't have too much good luck, can we?" said the man, smiling.
They laughed and enjoyed their feast the rest of the night.
The next day, the man left, continuing on with his travels, and a few days after that, the townspeople descended back down from the mountains back into the city. To their surprise, they found the old lady still piddling around her house.
"What happened? How were you able to survive? Shouldn't you be gone, eaten by the monster?" asked the townspeople.
"It was the strangest thing," said the woman. And she proceeded to tell them what happened, about how she had a fire at her front door, hung scrolls and lanterns, set off firecrackers, and made dumplings. "Maybe you all should try it next year. That way you won't have to be scrambling all the way back up to the mountains and hiding in that cold, dank cave."
And so the next year, every single house in the town had their entrances covered in red. Every stoop had a fire burning, and there were scrolls, lanterns, firecrackers galore. And from every house you could hear chopping--thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud--as meat and vegetables were being minced for dumpling filling.
The monster came back, rising from the lake as scheduled, to look for its annual meal. It remembered the year before, seeing the red and hearing the noise from the one house, and how that had made it uncomfortable. But as it entered the town, it saw so much red to burn its eyes, and heard so much noise to hurt its ears. One house last year was enough to drive him away, but now the whole town? The monster ran off, scared, back to the lake, never to rise up again.
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And that is why there is so much red and dumplings are eaten during Chinese New Year. I'm sure there are other stories, but I particularly like this one. Perhaps because it's the only one I've heard. But let's not get picky.
Also, for your own reading pleasure, here's the story I remember of how the Chinese zodiac was created (or at least the first three slides and the last one; I'm not sure about the rest of the animals beyond the mouse, the ox, and the cat. But at least there's an explanation).
So to everybody, 新年快樂 恭喜發財 万事如意 歲歲平安 年年有餘 心想事成 學業進步 馬年吉祥, and whatever other four-character sayings are out there. Basically, happy Chinese New Year:)
And if any non-Chinese speaker wants to guess what the Chinese phrases mean in the comments section below, please do. First person to get all eight right might receive something. Or a hearty congratulations.
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