Taoyuan Nights

Well, my first Chinese new year in Taiwan has almost arrived. Even now, two days before new year, it’s hard to ignore the noise of fireworks going off throughout the evening as the year of the Pig rapidly approaches.

Mysterious pig-themed monolith found outside the Taipei Main Station.

The new year buildup starts with having a party (or several parties) thrown by your employer, with lots of singing, food, and ‘prizes’ for employees. These prizes are dealt out either at random, or according to how well you did during the year, depending on what kind of business you are in. Some of these prizes can be very valuable; my own employer had TVs, DVD players etc. to be won - and no one left the room without at least a decent sized box of shampoo/toothpaste/etc, or something similar. You also get a ‘new year’s bonus’, which is anything up to 1.5 months extra salary. A nice perk, to say the least. This is paid almost everywhere, no matter what type of employer you have.

The thing that surprised me most though, as the title of this post will indicate, is ‘wow, they have Chinese new year songs!’. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. In the west we have thousands of songs about Christmas, so over here, they have thousands of songs about Chinese new year. It just hadn’t occurred to me, till I started hearing things like ‘gong xi gong xi gong xi, gong xi fa cai’ thousands of times, in every restaurant and shop I went into. Here are a few examples:

Awful new year music.
Andy Lau shamelessly presents “Karoake Gong Xi Fa Cai”.

There are some phrases which are particularly useful to know at this time of year.

恭喜发财
‘gong xi fa cai’ (pronounced gong shee fah tsai): literally ‘congratulations, get rich!’

A traditional greeting/send-off around new year. It’s pretty much safe to say this to anyone and everyone. If you’re a westerner who doesn’t speak much mandarin, you can totally surprise people (in a good way) by coming out with this at the end of your conversation, since they’ll probably expect you to try the next phrase (xin nian kuai le) instead.

新年快乐
‘xin nian kuai le’ (pronounced shin knee-an kwai li): literally ‘new year happy’. A slightly more modern new year greeting. There is an associated hand gesture - you are meant to put your left hand into a fist, place your right hand ‘around it’ and wave this 2-handed ‘covered fist’ up and down slightly as you say happy new year.

Picture from http://www.mamalisa.com/blog/

‘hong bao’: A ‘red envelope’ containing some money, which is given by older or married people, to younger or single people. ‘hong bao na lai’ is a response often used by children when people say ‘gong xi fa cai’ to them. I.e. ‘congratulations, get wealthy’ gets you ’sure - where’s my red envelope then??’.

Here are some links you can browse which have more information about the many traditions of Chinese new year.

About.com
Wikipedia
Canadian site about traditions.
Audio/characters for gong xi fa cai