Getting ready for Chinese New Year

By Myra Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): When I came to visit Auntie Hong just before Christmas, I found her busy preparing for the Chinese New Year. She had bought sacks full of sticky rice and brown sugar.

Auntie Hong makes the traditional cakes called kueh keranjang (basket cakes) for a bit of extra income during the Lunar New Year celebrations. The giant wok used to make the dough had been taken out to be cleaned along with the baskets in which the dough is to be poured.

"Auntie isn't it too early for the Chinese New Year preparations?" I asked.

"Well, actually I'm late," she answered. "The fasting month has started and our New Year will be just before the end of the fast, won't it?"

"No, Auntie, this year the Chinese New year will not coincide with Idul Fitri, but will be in February."

She was dumbfounded. Chinese New Year coincided with Idul Fitri for the last three years and perhaps she thought it would be the same again this time. But no, she had heard it from someone else, a person who had come to order her cakes.

I called this person and asked her where this news came from, but she had also heard from someone else, and said she would call me back. After a string of telephone calls, she called and told me that it was an order from Hong Kong. Apparently a temple had advised the Chinese in Indonesia to celebrate the New Year before Idul Fitri to avoid riots, because there was less likelihood of riots during the fasting month.

It sounded like a good advice but was it possible? The Chinese calendar has been established since the days of the Yellow Emperor, the first of the five August Emperors who lived around 2500 B.C.

They had invented tools for the farmers and fishermen, such as the plough to tilt the land and the nets for capturing fishes and birds. They also noticed that there was a rhythm in the change of the time such as day and night and the different seasons.

Thus they invented the calendar to record these changes. This calendar has been used by emperors and farmers to determine the time of important decisions and operations, such as sowing, harvesting etc. In fact, the Chinese character for "year" represents a man carrying a sheaf of grain on his back, in other words, the annual harvest.

This show how closely linked the calendar is with the life of the farmers. When Dr Sun Yat Sen succeeded to overthrow the Manchus in 1911 and announced that under the new republic the New Year will celebrated according to the Western calendar on January 1st, people still went on to celebrate the old traditional New Year, which was more meaningful for them.

Now, what will happen when suddenly a group of people decides to move the New Year and celebrate it a month earlier than usual? The answer is that not only will the whole year become disorganized in terms of holidays and festivals, but the effect will also be felt in following years.

This is because the calendar is based on calculations with very complicated astronomical equipment. In 104 B.C., Szu-ma Chien, the great astrologer and archivist, made changes to the existing calendar of the day.

By employing compasses, sundials and water clocks, he marked out the first and last days of each month, the spring and autumn equinoxes and the summer and winter solstices, the movements of the heavenly bodies and the phases of the moon.

The duration of one month is one cycle of the moon, just like in the Arabic calendar. The difference is that the new moon can be seen on the first of each month for the Arabs, whereas the Chinese designate the day before the moon can be seen as the first day of the month, and the 15th day of each month coincides with the full moon.

That was why last year, and for the two previous years, the Chinese New Year fell one or two days before the Idul Fitri holiday. The reason the two festivals do not coincide this year, and for the next thirty-four or thirty-five years to come, is that the Chinese calendar had a leap month last year. These leap months occur twice in five years to align the spring season with the beginning of the year.

These calculations for the calendar date from 106 B.C., and have since been perfected by the Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci and his successors in the 17th century. It was the outstanding work of Verbiest, a Flemish Jesuit astronomer, that has enabled the Chinese to predict the positions of the moon and other heavenly bodies far into the future. As such the Chinese calendar has been arranged many years in advance, and cannot be changed, for whatever reason.

The New Year for the Chinese is not only the beginning of the year, but also the beginning of the four seasons. There are many rituals to be observed before the year ends and the New Year is heralded.

One week before the end of the old year, the Kitchen God departs to heaven to report on the family he has been guarding. For this reason houses have to be cleaned at this time, and most important of all, debts have to be settled. The image of the Kitchen God is smeared with honey, so he will take sweet news about the family.

And when finally the New Year has arrives, it is welcomed with firecrackers, because the roads have to be cleared of evil spirits. For three days the world is at rest and people do nothing but visit friends and relatives to pay their respects.

Of course they have to wear new dresses, usually red, because red is the color of good luck and festivity. They serve cookies, sweets, oranges and nuts, all of which have to be eaten because of their symbolic meanings. Lion dance groups sometimes visit to perform their latest tricks. Of course they expect a substantial angpao, a red envelope containing a sum of money, because they bring good luck to your house. Children and unmarried women, too, receive angpao.

The lunch at home is for the family members to get together. For the wealthy the meal should include abalone, sea cucumbers and other delicacies, but one dish should never be left out: the fish. How it is served is not important but fish should always be present, for the word "fish" sounds similar to word "abundance", and that is what every family has in mind for the year to come.

On the 15th of the first month, the full moon invites people to go outside to celebrate. Until the early 60s, Jakarta still had the celebrations in Glodok, where young people would come together hoping for a chance to meet their soul mate.

Girls would throw mandarins to the boy of their choice, and when he felt the same way, the would also show his affection so the two could meet. There were also celebrations in the temples, where the gods are taken out and carried in sedan chairs to join the procession.

Afterwards people would enjoy a meal of lontong capgomeh -- rice cooked in banana leaves with chicken and tempeh and tofu cooked in coconut milk. This uniquely Indonesian meal enforces the perception that the Chinese community is more Indonesian than Chinese.

This full moon festival concludes the series of celebrations for the New Year. Auntie Hong will have a good New Year celebration this year, because she has received many orders. The New Order is gone and the Chinese people are happy that their celebrations are respected again.

The writer is a psychologist with interest in Chinese Culture