Happy New Year, What do you say?
新年快乐，恭喜发财！
工作顺利，学习进步。
福如东海，寿比南山。
Living abroad during Spring Festival is a little bit strange for someone like me who has already spent past 18 years of my life in China. Even if I met with my Chinese friend at this day, we wouldn’t say anything especial. However, this is impossible in China. Chinese people celebrated for new year with warm words and sentences just like what westerners would do for Christmas: Happy Christmas and new year. But Chinese oral blessings to others are also very different…It is very specific, depending on different kinds of people you talk to. These words would focus on certain targets, such as earning more money, living longer and better grades.
For example, this 恭喜发财，is meaning earning more money. 福如东海，寿比南山is an old saying for the elders, a metaphor which hope the luckiness can be as much as the amount of sea water in Eastern Sea, and age can be as steady as ZhongNan Mountain. This is a great wishes for longevity. Besides these, we have 学习进步 for students to wish a higher grade, and 工作顺利 for everthing going in well in works.
Meanwhile we also give 红包. Elder members of family will give some money to kids in a red bag in very first day of new luna year, and the amount of money was largely depended on the area you living in, some place would be over 1,000 RMB, but some other area would be like under 30 RMB. This is different with the gift given by “Santa Claus” at Christmas, as asking for red bags directly instead waiting quietly in dream for gifts their parents giving them is also a fun thing for kids to do, adding a sense of happiness and closeness among family members.
Although I personally believe nowadays, these words are represently a sense of wishes more than their original meaning, I will still suggest this stituation can reflect difference in culture of Chinese and western society. Staying in humbleness and kindness, but maybe in the instinct, Chinese people are more straight and realistic about what they want, they will turn an abstract concept of happiness to certain improvement in life. That is intersting and worthy to dicuss.
