peige avatar

PRETEND TYPEWRITER

HAPPY YEAR OF THE FIRE HORSE 🔥🐴

Celebrating Chinese New Year 2026.

新年快樂 (Xīnnián kuàilè), folks, aka "Happy New Year" in Mandarin.

Every year, I try to learn a bit more about Chinese-Taiwanese culture specific to my family background. During the summer of 2025, I started taking Mandarin lessons with a Taiwanese tutor. I chose a Taiwanese tutor specifically, because I wanted also wanted to learn about the culture. I no longer have contact with family members, but I still want to understand my roots. So I've taken matters into my own hands.

I won't go into the historical details because I'm still learning about it. However, I do know that since the 17th century, Taiwan has endured waves of colonization by Chinese immigrants. On my father's side, I know that one of my ancestors came from the Fujian wave of migrants. My mother's side was more recent, during the 1950s when Chinese nationalists fled to Taiwan.


Childhood memories

Because of this, Chinese New Year is one of the traditions that was passed down to my generation. I grew up in a predominantly Asian area in LA (626 SGV represent!), so it was normal to see my friends and family celebrate this on a weekend. We even had lion dancers perform at our elementary school!

As a kid, I thought it was a fake holiday, despite so much presence surrounding it. It was never listed as an official holiday in our calendars, and we would just celebrate it on the weekends because that's when everyone had time off, so it felt like something that families did amongst themselves.

I knew the basics: Wear red, clean your house before the new year and never during because you'll sweep away all your luck, and receive red envelopes with money if you're a kid. I was an obedient child and saved all of my red envelopes under my pillow.

We always went to my aunt's house for CNY because my paternal grandma, Ah-Ma, lived there and would cook elaborate meals. I remember helping make tangyuan, little glutinous balls that we would boil in sweet soup. I hated the texture and taste of it, but I enjoyed making little snowmen and other shapes (even though we weren't supposed to do that).

I only have vague memories. I remember wrapping dumplings with my maternal grandmother around our small kitchen table. Later on, when Ah-Ma passed, my mom started wrapping vegetarian dumplings together with my sister and I. I remember not wanting to do it, because they would criticize that my dumplings were ugly. That was the extent of my Chinese New Year rituals.


Living in Asia

When I moved to Hong Kong, I was shocked that we got 3 days off for Chinese New Year (they get a whole week off in China), and I even received red envelopes from my co-workers! It wasn't a lot of money of course, but it was still enough to buy snacks and whatnot. Since I was close to Taiwan, I also flew back one time to celebrate CNY with my family.

Most importantly, I learned that there were so many rituals, one for each of the 15 days. It was wonderful, seeing a holiday I thought was only a family tradition be so meticulously celebrated from the place it stemmed from.


Maintaining traditions

I've heard that cities with large Chinese populations like London, Paris, and even Amsterdam, celebrate CNY in their respective Chinatowns. Well, Switzerland doesn't have that. Maybe in the French part, but not where I live. Since I moved here, I would always host a CNY dinner in my home. Then, I had a Hong Kong friend who was a cook. She hosted gatherings at the local community center where Daniel and I helped out.

We're no longer friends now, so I'm back to hosting at my home. Towards the end of last year, I became more open to meeting new people again and I've arranged a proper dinner for March 1.


This year

Every year, I want to practice one of the traditional rules. So this year, my goals were:

  1. Clean the apartment before Chinese New Year Eve ✔︎
  2. Prepare a CNY Eve dinner for the family (aka me and Daniel) ✔︎
  3. Not shower on the first two days of the new year [in-progress]

Cleaning the apartment

I knew you were supposed to clean before the new year. But I didn't know you only had until Chinese New Year Eve Eve to clean! This was because, back in the day, you'd probably want to get the cleaning out of the way to focus on all the cooking that would occur on the Eve. We don't clean regularly, so having a deadline for this really helps.

This was why I was cleaning madly before I left for Zürich on the 14th. I didn't want to be overwhelmed with cleaning, knowing I'd be tired from my return. Daniel and I aren't the cleanest people, so our place isn't sparkling. We each chose some areas to deep-clean, and then did our usual chore shares of sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, etc. I also wanted to make sure all decorations were up before the Eve.

Preparing CNY Eve dinner

This was another tradition I learned. Again, growing up, I had no idea when Chinese New Year was. I just did whatever the family did. And since this wasn't an official holiday in the US, I'm sure many families just celebrated on the weekends, so they probably weren't paying attention to all these daily rules anyway.

I always assumed you would have the big feast on the day of the new year, but no! The big feast is actually on the eve, when people rush to their family home, like the place where they grew up. My tutor told me that commuting on the Eve is always chaotic, because EVERYONE is rushing home for this important meal.

My only family here is Daniel, but hey, that counts for something! Yesterday, after my manicure, we braved the disgusting Fasnacht streets of Lucerne to the Asian grocery store and bought bags and bags of dumplings. I had looked up traditional meals to cook, but it was either a whole fish from head to tail, or a whole chicken, and I ain't doing none of that when I'm not feeling 100%. So frozen dumplings it is!

We used to wrap dumplings ourselves every year, but they didn't keep well and sometimes I'd end up cooking a giant soup of mashed dumplings together, which was kinda gross. My tutor told me she doesn't really make dumplings herself, so if store-bought is good enough for a Taiwanese person, then it's good enough for me!

Last night, we had pork and cabbage dumplings (good), and beef and tomato (very bad). I couldn't stand the taste of the latter so I made Daniel eat all of them. :S

No showering for the first two days

Apparently it's also the God of Water's birthday, so to honor him, one mustn't wash their hair or do the laundry during the first two days of the new year. To prepare for this, I made sure to have a nice shower last night. Washing the dishes is fine though. ¯\ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ/¯


Dinner and a movie

My tutor recommended the movie "Eat Drink Man Woman" (1994) directed by Ang Lee. We started it last night and finished it this morning. She said it's great to watch while eating, because it follows the story of a chef and his family, and they're always discussing some family drama over elaborately cooked meals. I really enjoyed it. It was funny and slow-paced, and the plot twists were unbelievable. My jaw dropped several times. I paused the movie just to turn to Daniel and ask, "Omg, do you know what's happening right now?" (He wasn't really following along because he said it was too slow. -_-)


15 more days left!

For the rest of the week, I'll be eating round things: Lots of dumplings and oranges! I also want to make fa gao tomorrow. I've been filming B-roll so I can put together an easy YouTube video afterwards.

I'll leave you with my nails:

And a horse greeting:

馬到成功

Ma Dao Cheng Gong: May success arrive immediately (literally "horse arrives, success achieved"). This is perhaps the most celebrated horse idiom, wishing one immediate triumph. (Source)

Previous | Next

#2026 #blog #party