Xiao Nian and The Chinese New Year

Xiao Nian and The Chinese New Year

The first year in China makes for a lot of questions that are sometimes hard or difficult to find the answers to. With the new year swiftly approaching, it is appropriate that guests in this country are accustomed or informed on the traditions and interesting practices that people revolve this month long holiday around. “Xiao Nian”, or “Small Year“ in English, is the week or so before the actually Lunar Calendar New Year. It is probably just as important and significant as the New Year itself in a way, this usually occurs in late January or early February.

Firstly it is important to recognize that although China follows both the Lunar Calendar year and the Georgian Calendar year. The Lunar Calendar year is traditionally the Calendar year followed more closely due to its practicality in farming and the country’s crop production. The Lunar Calendar year follows the earth’s rotation around the sun where ad the Georgian Calendar is a Solar calendar used to provide a standardized way to count days, months and years. The influence to push the Georgian Calendar originally came from influence by the Church which was unhappy with the drifting of certain religious celebrations throughout the year. The calendar has been reformed a number of times throughout history to provide a more accurate tracking of time, thus times of the year such as “Leap Day”.

China celebrates the New Year twice in a manner of speaking because of tradition. It has long since been ingrained into the culture the importance to family and bringing good fortunate and prosperity to each family through a series of customs that are practiced during this time. The week before the actually three day celebration is known as “Xiao Nian”, and is a very important time for a number of reasons, this is the time in which the family members (if further away from their family’s hometown or base location) will migrate back home. After returning home with “Hong Bao” (red envelopes) gifts and “Jiu” (wine) or “Yen Tiao” (cartons of cigarettes), the family will begin their practices which different between regions, families and even provinces. An example as described by Ren Li (ESL Director here at MLIS), says that her father’s family in Zhuang He would put their family tree (a document of all patriarchs in the family from as far back as before any of them could imagine) up in the home with offerings beneath it to welcome home the patriarchs from the afterlife for the celebration.

Among the many traditions and customs that accompany the new year there are some that we can understand and consider familiar with our own. To welcome the new year, families will clean their entire house in belief that a thorough sweeping of the home will cleanse it of any negative or evil that may be within it, we call this spring cleaning and the evil could be a metaphor for the expired cans or frozen foods in the basement that we not have had time to cook. The killing of the pig, where the family slaughters a prized sow for the family feast in which the entire pig is used in a dish, who doesn’t like to have a large variety of dishes in front of them at a meal!? Purchasing all new clothing for kids or at least new underwear for themselves, we usually do this before the New Year on the ever so missed “Boxing Day”.

When travelling many individuals find these traditions and customs interesting for the fact that they are so similar to what other cultures do, however there are the select few that really enjoy chancing down folklore and interesting tales of deities, creatures or religious beliefs. There is in fact a deity or “God” whom is responsible for visiting the home of every Chinese family and reporting their behaviours and thankfulness back to the Head Deity. The deity responsible for the report is named “Zhao Wang Ye”, if the family is worthy he will return and over see the prosperity and wellness of the family. As traditions predict, an offering must be made to “Zhao Wang Ye”, the offerings made are usually a specific type of candy that are placed below a poster of the Deity. After “Zhao Wang Ye” collects the candy, it is expected that he can only speak sweet words to the head deity. Another interesting part of this belief is that when a family member is purchasing the deity’s picture for display, they should not be askign if they can “buy” the picture. The family member or purchasing party does not want to outright sound like they are bribing the deity to visit them, but they want to invite him as a guest and friend into their home, this is signaled by saying “Wo Keyi yaoqing zhao wang ye dao wojia”.

There is also a “game” in a manner of speaking, for traditional Chinese, it is a tradition and firm belief. Guests of the country can participate in this tradition among friends and coworkers to improve their Chinese vocabulary as well as their overall mood possibly. Families will avoid speaking of any negative words or in outright negative ways. For those who don’t quite understand how this game would work, in the Chinese language a word can have four tones, each tone of the word meaning something different. The idea is that any word that has a negative connotation or denotation in any of the four tones, cannot/should not be spoken aloud, for example “Si”, means four, and dead…could explain a lot when travelling through hotels and apartment buildings or looking at the composition of music eh?

When the time comes, be sure to pick up some candies, your Zhao Wang Ye picture, clean your home, get a hearty meal and brush up on your Chinese! Happy New Year folks!

-Carmelo Bono

DH Planning 10 and Foods DMLIS

2016