Chinese New Year in the old hometown

By Jeffrey Lee Florendo

ODDLY, and not surprisingly, we celebrate the Roman Christian New Year in much the same way as the Chinese New Year—with much noise-making and fireworks and domestic rituals and observances that we sometimes take for superstitions. Like, keep the windows open at the stroke of midnight—despite the smoke and soot of the firecrackers—to let good luck in; keep the sweepings from the floor inside the house until after the first day of the New Year; wear new clothes, especially with circular prints (symbols of money). And so forth. On the Chinese New Year these beliefs and activities make the best way to express the guonian, to have made it through the old year, and the bainian, to congratulate the New Year.

On its fourth year as Bacolaodiat, the Chinese New Year celebration in Bacolod, now a growing touristic attraction for the city famous for its Masskara, Bacolod is gearing itself for a most colorful and meaningful festivity, on Jan. 23 to 26, 2009, the Year of the Ox.

For the oldtimer Tsinoys of Bacolod, the Bacolaodiat is as evocative and nostalgic as the New Year observance in the old hometown, on the first day of the first moon of the lunar calendar.

“It is a day of gift-giving, feasting and praying in the temples,” recalls Ong Eng Chiong, 82, who came to the Philippines, from Amoy (now Xiamen), when he was 24 years old. “New Year was always a happy and prosperous time, coming hard on the heels of the December harvest. We had choy kiao [dumplings] and kiam peng [like arroz valenciana] and 10 to 12 kinds of fish, meat and noodle dishes. We would eat until after midnight of the New Year, with the elders drinking beer till they were singing at the top of their voices.”

Children, he said, showed off their new clothes and shoes, and eagerly opened their red angpaos containing the coins that were small fortunes for them. On New Year’s day itself, Ong recalls, “we [the children] had a grand time playing games with liso [often longam seeds] and chisay [coins]. The family would trek to the nearest Taoist temple to light three joss sticks, representing heaven, earth and oneself, for prosperity or luck in mahjong.”

Pacita Sia, 86, was nine years old when she was brought by her father to the old hometown in Lam-an province to learn how to speak Chinese. But her aunts balked at sending her to school and instead enlisted her to help in the fields and to weave mats; she picked up Chinese from the children she played with in the neighborhood. Daily life was unrelentingly ordinary, she recalls, except on the New Year when she was given a new dress and an angpao filled with coins and joined everyone in the street to watch the parade of lanterns and floats.

“Life may be hard then in our town,” she says, “but on New Year the elders took care that there was plenty of food on the table and the whole family was happy and everyone wished each other good luck and prosperity in the coming year.”

Jet Lee, 35, president of the Negros chapter of the Philippine Chinese Chamber of Commerce, is from Hokien and has been in the Philippines since 1996. On New Year’s Eve, he says, before the family partakes of the midnight dinner, a fire was built in an earthen pot placed at the threshold of the house and everyone would jump over the fire (kiao hei hou) to cleanse body and soul. The ashes left by the fire in the pot were then spread under the master’s bed for more fortune in the coming year.

New Year morning, Jet Lee says, is spent visiting one’s ancestors to greet them kung hei fat choy and who in turn serve sweets and bestow angpaos. Day after New Year is for visiting the parents of one’s spouse. “But there’s a superstition,” he says, “that forbids one to visit the dead or the sick or a newborn on New Year’s day.”

You cannot also collect from your debtors on New Year’s day, “otherwise you will get beaten up by them,” says Jet Lee, laughing. “But lenders have a way around this to be able to collect. They carry a lighted lantern to your house to indicate that it’s still night although it’s already New Year morning!”

Chinoy oldtimer and businessman Teofilo Ponce is too ingrained in his ways as a Filipino to fully appreciate the peculiar observances of the Chinese New Year, but he understands what they mean. So it may seem with the twenty-something Chinoys in Bacolod. Friends Melissa Ong, Jasmin Cordova and Bea Wey Tampinco could not know much about how New Year is celebrated in the land of their ancestors, and like other Chinoy youngsters everywhere they only have the usual recollections of New Year at home—plentiful food and Chinese sweets, new clothes, visits with grandparents, the color red everywhere, and angpaos.

The three girls have spent several years in Beijing, studying the Mandarin language or traveling around or working (Jasmin worked for the official Web site of the Beijing Olympic Games); but in Beijing, where young people are getting ever more sophisticated and cosmopolitan, these three girls observe that young people would rather spend the New Year holidays in a winter resort or other vacation places away from home.

But celebrated in the traditional way or not, the Chinese New Year has positive things to teach us. Foremost of these, it’s a time for reinforcing family solidarity and for strengthening ties with relatives and friends. More than any other Chinese holiday, the New Year stresses the importance of family and friends.

The 20th of the 12th moon is set aside for spring cleaning, and bidding goodbye to the Kitchen God, or Zaowang, the guardian of the family hearth, who is supposed to return on the first day of the New Year. On the last two or three days of the year, stores would close shop until the first week of the New Year. Chinese families would then be kept busy stocking on foods and gifts in the last week of the old year. New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are strictly family affairs.

On New Year’s day, it is improper to tell a lie, raise one’s voice, or use indecent languge; it is also considered unlucky to break anything. The entire first week is dedicated to socializing and diversions, like firework displays and theatrical shows. The seventh day of the New Year is “everybody’s birthday” as everybody is considered one year older as of this date. (In traditional China, everyone added a year to his age at New Year’s time, rather than at his birthday.)

The New Year climaxes on the 15th day of the first moon with a lantern festival, highlighted by a dragon dance that in many places might stretch for more than a hundred feet in length.

Such recollections of traditional observances of the Chinese New Year is what Bacolaodiat is all. Bacolaodiat happens on Jan. 23, Friday, to Jan. 26, Monday, 2009.