It’s today (Thursday). The Year of the Rabbit. The wife’s not here to remind me how to wish Happy New Year in her family’s Chinese dialect of Teochew, also spelled Chiuchow and a seemingly endless variety of other ways, so English will have to do.
The elaborate Chinese-Thai temple that our condo overlooks was hopping last night, with a big candlelight procession by the monks. We’ll be getting together in Chinatown this weekend with the wife’s family for a big feast.
Happy Year of the Rabbit!
Happy New Year! I’m still full from last night’s feast at the in-laws’. For Vietnamese it’s the Year of the Cat. Guess what earworm that leads to.
Happy New Year as well! Beijing is a war zone full of fireworks as usual. My son is now 3 and is enjoying the celebrations a lot more than last year. I’m still too reticent to try and blow up my hand, I mean, set off my own fireworks.
Gung He Fat Choy!
I got my lucky money the other day, as well as lots of treats and stuff from the SO’s mom. I love Chinese New Year.
Chúc mừng năm mới! (Vietnamese)
It must be interesting in Thailand. You can celebrate the western new year in January, then the lunar new year a month or so later, and then start getting ready for Songkran, the Thai new year. Three New Year’s Days per year!
Now if I can only stop writing Tiger on all my checks.
I have traditionally stopped by to make that joke, but this year I feared people would be tired of it by now - I still love it every year.
Except the Thai New Year truly sucks. Many farangs (Westerners) and even some Thais try to escape for the period. We did last year but will be here this year, albeit barricaded indoors. Next year though, it’s not quite a coincidence that we’re picking April to visit the US.
Explain? It gets particularly boisterous or something?
I’ve ranted about Thai New Year plenty in other threads. “Boisterous” is a pretty mild word for what it becomes. Truly shows the dark side of the Thai culture.
Happy New Year from Texas!
Japanese celebrate New Year’s on the Western calendar, but out family does Chinese New Year’s since my wife is from Taiwan.
We had traditional Taiwanese cooking last night. Good stuff.
So the New Year’s greeting in Teochew, as I had to learn again, same as every year, Is:
Sing jia yu ee
Sing ni kiang khang
Then the person you tell it to replies with the rough equivalent of “Same to you.” I have to relearn this every year, and the wife says this is given only to older people, as the sentiment is wishing good health in the new year to come. For younger people still with their whole lives before them and fortunes to be made, you’d wish them prosperity. It’s only older folks I tell this to every year, so I don’t know that other variation.
But it was a good feed down in Chinatown on Saturday night. Got quietly shnockered on Hennessy cognac with the wife’s 82-year-old uncle, who is not only ethnic Chinese but also a Taiwanese citizen. He was the subject of this thread of mine previously, and man can he still knock it back for an old coot.
Happy new year all… we are celebrating it for the first time together (after getting married in 2000) in Shanghai, where my wife comes from. It is an experience.
Gong Xi Fai Cai
Xing Ni Kwai Le
Have a great and prosperous new year kind sir!
So did you take the Teo Chew Yu Sheng? I luurrve Yu Sheng!!
BTW - If your wife is Teo Chew I presume you eat the cold jellied pork? What a great way to dine!
No, we eschew the cold jellied pork. Blechh!