Happy Belated New Years

By Mao Inoue

January 25th was the Chinese New Year’s Day. Within about seven years of staying in Malaysia, I have experienced the first Chinese New Year party on this day and obtained some cultural knowledge and images regarding how people celebrate New Years here. When people experience Japanese and Chinese styles, they will discover that they have some similarities, but at the same time, they have their own way to celebrate too.

Japanese New Years is the first of January. Throughout the new year holiday, we gather with family and relatives and have a reunion time. Buddhist temples perform the tolling of a bell 108 times, starting from midnight on New Year’s Eve. Although there are some opinions about the 108 tolls of the bell, the most famous reason is that it symbolizes the casting away of 108 earthly desires, bonnou, which are believed to cause human suffering.

On New Year's Day, people visit Shinto shrines to offer prayers and draw a fortune slip. They offer a lion dance and many stalls. Osechi is the traditional food we eat on New Year’s Day; colorful varieties of food, which are embedded with different meanings for each, are packed in ju-bako, which resembles bento boxes. Children look forward to getting otoshidama, the money they get from the adults as a New Year’s gift.

On the other hand, Chinese New Years follows the lunar calendar. Jia Yi Lim (12) explains Chinese New Year as, “It's an important event for the Chinese all around the world. As Chinese culture places importance on the family, Chinese New Years is a time when cherished ones come together to celebrate the new year.”

Before the New Year's Day, her “family comes together to have a reunion lunch.” They “have several steamboats around the table and a variety of dishes to choose from.” They also eat special desserts: “mandarin oranges and soybean pudding.”

Although Japanese spend most of the time with family, Chinese families “invite friends and relatives over to our house and enjoy ourselves… and spend much of the event with friends, eating and playing.”

In Chinese culture, “unmarried people like me would receive red packets,” with money inside. They also observe more authentic “lion dances, which are accompanied by loud music…meant to scare evil spirits away.”

Because our cultures are very similar, the way we celebrate is similar, but slightly different like our two cultures. I feel that this new year even reflects on each of the characteristics of our cultures. It is very fascinating and important to open our eyes and seek out these sorts of relationships more; we can learn a lot from experience, and that will be the first step to understand each other.