Chinese New Year and Chinese Customs
In my memoir when I wrote about my family's Chinese New Year celebrations I wanted readers to see the way we lived the festivities from the family reunion dinner on New Year's Eve to Chap Goh Meh and the various rituals and customs: preparation of special dishes and rice wine; receiving hong pow; the peace we children had on the first four days of the new year; bringing of good luck and the warding off of evil spirits; appeasing the kitchen god.
Chinese customs, rituals and festivals were an integral part of my grandmother's established practices in China and became a part of my own childhood. I could not have written my memoir without talking about those experiences in intimate detail.
I hope that for the curious or those wanting to know more about the culture of China it will be informative and a revelation reading about the traditions that my grandmother brought to our household, among them:
- The 'traditional' attitude to female children
- The impact that Chinese astrology had on our lives
- Chinese New Year festivities
- The Ching Ming ceremony at the graves of ancestors
- The festival in honour of the moon goddess
- The Dragon Boat festival
- Worship in the temple with shong yau, kao chim and ta-pui
- The importance of sons and chief mourners
- The Book of Three Lifetimes
- The cleansing ceremony at one month after childbirth
- Herbal remedies and painful 'mungsa' treatments
- Buddha and the animal signs
- Taoist observance after a funeral
- The giving of pak kum
- The importance of feng-shui in a new house