Happy New Year

Let’s celebrate our new 2018 lunar year! This weekend, we embrace our new year, and we eat a lot of Chinese traditional food such as dumplings, hot pot, Xiao Long Bao, and some special dishes. Though I was in Los Angeles, but I can still feel the atmosphere of celebrating the new year, because every time when we enter a restaurant, the waiter will say happy new year to our Chinese people. Besides of saying happy new year in spring festival, we still say a lot of other words to each other to express happiness.

The most we say is depending on which kind of year of that year. For example, 2018 is dog year, so we say “狗年大吉”, “狗年行大运” to others, which means happy dog year. “大吉” is common for us to use during the new year, and the meaning of it is to have a good luck. If this year is chicken year, we will say have a good luck on the chicken year. We use 12 chinese zodiac signs as the head of the word and adding “good luck” behind it. That’s how we used to say to others on the spring festival.

Moreover, we have a lot of other idioms to celebrate the festival. We used to hope others’ family have a great life, and the elders can have a strong body and long life, and wish others’ dream will come true soon. In Chinese these word would like, “身体健康， 万事如意，阖家欢乐，寿比南山。” Sometimes when we meet a couple who just married, we will wish them have a baby, like “早生贵子。” There is one thing that I must mention is that Chinese people love money very much, so we always wish others earn more money and then we will ask for a red pocket so that that guy can get more money in that year. This is just for fun, but it is very traditional in China. “恭喜发财，红包拿来”，which means hope you have more wealth, just give me a red pocket.

There are still a lot of phrases for Chinese to use during the Spring Festival, but what I mentioned above is what we use frequently. At the end of the passage, hope everybody will have a great great dog year!