2009: Year of the Ox

by Celia Sin-Tien Cheng
January 26, 2009

Happy Chinese New Year! As this is the year of the ox, which also happens to be my Chinese zodiac animal, I’m sharing a paper cutting of the hard-working creature that this lunar year honors. If you’re celebrating Chinese New Year, too, don’t forget some key dishes you’ll have to eat to ensure a prosperous year:

The Chinese word for “excess” has the same phonetic sound as “fish,” so we eat fish at New Year’s in hopes of a year of prosperity and abundance.

We eat rice cake because its rising is symbolic of rising to success.

The Chinese word for a type of seaweed known as hair vegetable sounds like prosper, so we eat this vegetable on Chinese New Year, too.

And just to make sure, we eat dumplings, because the shape is reminiscent of ancient Chinese currency, and tofu, whose shape is reminiscent of bars of gold.

Here’s an image I created (all from type) of the Chinese proverb “Year year have excess,” (年年有餘) which means to live in abundance year after year, but I’ve changed the illustration to a more literal representation of “Year year have fish”: 年年有魚.