Chinese New Year’s Blessings
While English only has few simple words and phrases for blessing, such as “Happy New Year” and “ Wish you all the best,” Chinese has various.
In Chinese, there are a lot of idioms with four characters are made for blessing. While some blessings like “心想事成”（wish your dream will come true) “万事如意”(everything goes as you wish),“身体健康”(enjoy good health), and “好运连连” （may luck always accompany you) are generally used to wish everyone, there are some other blessings are used different to men, women, elderly, and children. And those different blesses to different people reflect the traditional Chinese thoughts and society position for men, women, elderly, and children.
Because in traditional Chinese culture, men are the strongest person in a family and are always responsible for earning money to support the whole family, people usually bless men be prosperous, and successful. For examples,“恭喜发财”（means that may you be happy and prosperous）, “财源广进” （money and treasures will be plentiful), “升官发财”（be out for power and money), and “事业有成”（successful career). Women, in the old days, didn’t have jobs and depend their husbands’ incomes, so people usually don’t bless women have successful career and plentiful money. Instead, people like to wish them retain youth and beauty, such as “永葆青春” and “青春常驻”. Beauty is women’s asset to attract men. For elderly, nothing is more important than health and lives, so people like to wish them “长命百岁”（live as long as a hundred years) and “健康长寿”（be healthy and live long). Almost every elderly wish to have someone to rely on and stay at home happliy, so people usually bless elderly “儿孙满堂”（have a lot of children and grandchildren at home) ，and “阖家欢乐”(your whole family be happy). For children, most of them are in school, so people usually bless them “学业进步”(make academic progress) and “快高长大”(grow up quickly and healthily).
