CHINESE NEW YEAR.

Hello hello everyone, 

How are you? I am trying to post this on time- I still have an hour left when typed this! haha
We all just celebrating new year and now some of is counting to Chinese New Year. I am enjoying sounds of fireworks outside my house while am typing this. How cool is that!

Although I personally do not celebrate the day but I always enjoy the festive and its traditional foods. Especially when I worked with my former Bosses who happened to be Chinese, somehow have made the day stays in my memory in a special way.
Like other Chinese in Chinese community in Indonesia, They also celebrate the Chinese New Year or Imlek in local with age-old traditions passed down from their ancestors.

I might don't know the whole celebration of Chinese New year- except from those articles I read, but I am lucky to know and experience just a little bit that my Bosses introduced me; Chinese New Year Symbols and Tradition which I think the fun part.

Every Chinese New Year celebration, they would gave me Ang Pao or red packet with money and they will said, 'here's for good luck!'

So I learned the red color of the envelope symbolizes good luck and is supposed to word off evil spirits.

And of course I got Nian Gao or Sticky cake too.

Made from rice flour and sugar, its very sticky and sweet. The word Gao means High and Nian means Year so it can be represented as increasing in the next year or success.

According to Chinese legend, one week before the Spring Festival begins, the Kitchen god returns to heaven to report on a family's behavior throughout the previous year. In order to ensure a favorable report from the Kitchen god, the custom evolved of feeding him Nian Gao (sticky cake above), both as a bribe and as a means of ensuring his mouth was too full of cake to pass on a negative report!

Another one I like is Tangerines!

Not only I like the taste and its one of my fav type of orange too but Orange in Chinese tradition represents wealth and fresh fruit at the New Year symbolizes life and a new beginning. The orange is a prayer or wish for good fortune. 

From the source I read it said that as a harbinger of wishes for good luck, they are often eaten on the second day of the New Year. Why not the first, because once an Emperor distributed oranges to his officials on the second day of the New Year. Thus you are also wishing for officialdom if you eat them on this day.

Anyway, I like all the good symbolic meanings behind these traditional Chinese New Year  Symbols and Tradition and the Chinese New Year moment always bring back these sweet memory from past.

I sure could buy the Sticky cake or the Tangerines but they more than just fruits and yummy cake for me.

Ohw look at the time , its New year already! I want to be the first who wish everyone who celebrate Chinese New Year,

Xin Nian Kuai Le.Gong Xi Fa Chai.

source:
Wikipedia
Flickr
Wordpress
flavorandfortune.com
Personal experience