Getting ready for Chinese New Year

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