Tag Archives: Culture

Chinese New Year Myths and Legends

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Yesterday marked the start of the new Lunar New Year and living in Singapore, this becomes just as important to us (and not just for the 2.5 days public holidays we get). We Lo Hei in offices and great our friends, neighbours and colleagues a Happy New Year. I’ve blogged in detail about the Chinese New Year previously, so this year, I was looking at some of the myths and legends associated with the new year that I wanted to share with you all.

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The Legend of the New Year or Nian

The legend of the new year or Nian is a famous one. Long ago in the mountains, there lived a horrible demon creature named Nian. Every year, on the first day of the year, the creature would awaken and descend upon the village. He would eat all the grain and livestock. And if there were any children unfortunately stuck outside, they would disappear.

The villagers lived in fear of this beast and boarded up their houses on this night to protect their families. One year, right before this event was to occur, an old man visited the village. He turned to the villagers and asked, “Why do you fear this creature such? You are many and he is but one. Surely he could not swallow all of you.”

But the villagers remained sceptical and locked themselves up anyway. That night, Nian did not come. The old man had ridden him until dawn and the creature went back to its cave hungry. This went on for several nights until the old man revealed, “I cannot protect you forever.”

He turned out to be a god and had to return to his duties elsewhere. The villagers were terrified that once the old man left, they would once again see Nian return.

So the old man informed them, “The beast is easily scared. He does not like the colour red. He fears loud noises and strange creatures. So tonight, spread red across the village. Hang red signs on every door. Make loud noises with drums, music, and fireworks. And to protect your children, give them face masks and lanterns to protect them.” The villagers did as the old man instructed and Nian never returned again.

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The Legend of Why Red Envelopes Are Given

During the Chinese New Year period, the married or the elderly give red envelopes to children or unmarried juniors. A red envelope is also called yasui qian (“suppressing Sui money”).

According to legend, on New Year’s Eve, besides the monster Nian, there was a demon named Sui that came out to terrify children while they were asleep.

It was said that the children who were touched by the demon would be too scared to cry out loud, and got a terrible fever and even became mentally unstable. To keep children safe from being harmed by Sui, parents would light candles and stay up for the whole night.

On one New Year’s Eve, in an official’s family household, the parents gave their child eight coins to play with in order to keep him awake, so as to avoid him being hurt by the demon. The child wrapped the coins in red paper, opened the packet, rewrapped it, and reopened it until he was too tired to fall asleep. Then the parents placed the packet with eight coins under his pillow.

When Sui tried to touch his head, the eight coins emitted a strong light and scared the demon away. The eight coins turned out to be eight fairies. From then on, giving red envelopes became a way to keep children safe and bring good luck.

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The Legend of Why Spring Couplets Are Pasted

It is recorded that the origin of spring couplets can be dated back to 1,000 years ago when people hung taofu (written charms on peach wood) on doors.

Legend has it that there was a huge peach tree stretching for more than 1,500 kilometers on a mountain in the ghost world. To the northeast of the tree, two guards named Shentu and Yulei guarded the entrance to the ghost world. They would catch the ghosts who harmed people and then sent them to tigers as food.

Therefore, all ghosts were afraid of the two guards. It was believed that to hang a piece of peach wood with an inscription of the two guards’ names on doors could scare evil things away.

By the Song Dynasty (960-1279), people began to write two auspicious antithetical lines on the peach wood instead of the names of the two guards. Later, the peach wood was replaced by red paper, which symbolizes good luck and happiness. Since then, pasting spring couplets has been a custom to welcome the new year and express best wishes.

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The Legend of the Upside Down Calligraphy

Another decoration is calligraphy. The most common word is fú, meaning happiness or fortune. But you’ll rarely see it upright.

It is said that in the Ming dynasty, the Emperor ordered every household to decorate by pasting fu onto their doors. On New Year’s Day, he sent soldiers to check. They found that one illiterate family pasted the word upside down.

The Emperor ordered the family to be punished by death. Thankfully, the Empress was there and came up with an explanation: “Upside down” (dào) is a homophone of “here” (dào). When it’s upside down, it means that fu is here.

The explanation made sense to the Emperor and he set the family free. From then on, people would hang the word upside down, both for fortune and in remembrance of the kind Empress.

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The Legend of the Kitchen God and Candy

The Stove God (zào shén) is in charge of people’s meals and livelihoods. He’s one of the gods that interact with humans the most.

On the little new year (xiao nián) before the official “big” New Year (dà nián), he returns to the heavens. The Stove God reports to the Jade Emperor (yù dì), telling him how each family was during the year. He later returns to Earth to either bless or punish the families, as ordered by the Jade Emperor.

This is why families will make malt candy gourds and leave it out at night. The candy will sweeten the Stove God’s mouth so he’ll only praise the family. It can also stick his teeth together, stopping him from saying bad things. This way, the family will enjoy plentiful food the entire year.

Meditation

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One of the habits I have decided to track this year is meditating daily. But this is one habit I am not able to sustain on a daily basis. I decided to see what could be the reason for this and thought this post could then help someone else with the same problem as me.

My usual meditation routine is at night – just before I nod off. This worked earlier, but these days, I find myself sleeping off before I am able to meditate for even five minutes. I wonder what I am doing wrong. I have tried the Calm app before but wanted to try free form meditation this time around and do a proper meditation as opposed to depending on an external source to ground me.

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There is plenty of evidence floating around, including scientific evidence, about how meditation is good for you. Some of the benefits include the reduction of stress, which in turn helps in the sleep cycle, dispels depression and anxiety, reduces blood pressure, helps in the alleviation of fatigue and cloudy thinking and controls anxiety.

You also become more self-aware with the help of meditation and that in turn helps you to develop a stronger understanding of yourself and how you relate to those around you, thus helping you grow into your best self. The infographic above is an excellent condensation of the benefits of meditation.

So now that we know why meditation is good, what’s the best time to meditate. Most studies show that meditating twice a day – once as soon as you wake up and once just before you sleep is the best. You can also try meditating in bits and pieces throughout the day (in tranches of one to five minutes each) if that’s what you prefer.

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To start meditating, choose a quiet place, one where you are sure not to be disturbed when you are doing your practice (however short it may be). Sit on the floor cross-legged or if you can’t do that, sit in a straight-backed chair. I usually just use the timer off my phone and set the time I want to meditate and start the timer when I am ready. Now close your eyes and start to concentrate on your breathing. Your mind will start wandering at this point and thoughts will start crowding your head, especially undone tasks. When this happens, and your mind starts to wander, just bring it back into the breath and start focusing on it again. As you improve your practice, you will find this interval between the times your mind starts wandering lengthening and after some time you may be able to go your whole session without the mind not wandering even once!

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I walk a lot. I try to get 10,000 steps in a day and this means I spend at least a couple of hours over the course of my day walking to clock in the steps. I had heard of walking meditation and this is something I am trying to see if I can do – it will allow me to incorporate my daily meditation when I am walking and as a bonus, help me alleviate the boredom that sometimes comes when you walk alone.

So what is walking meditation? It is simply meditation in action. It is being aware of yourself as you walk. Actually, when I read about it, I realised I was already practising it all along. So for those who want to do walking meditation, here’s how you do it.

Find a space where you can comfortably walk. This space can be either indoors or outdoors. Start at one point and before you start, anchor yourself. This means you take a deep breath and focus on your body. Feel the ground beneath your feet and feel it. Become aware of the different sensations and feelings in your body and also take note of your thoughts and feelings at that point.

Start by walking slower than usual with a relaxed and natural gait. Be mindful of every step you take and when you reach the end of the path, pause for a second to centre yourself before you start walking back. Increase your pace after a couple of rounds to a pace that you are comfortable with. Keep your mind focussed on your feet and the steps they take. As with the traditional meditation, when you feel your mind wandering (as it definitely will), gently guide it back. Walk for around ten to twenty minutes before you stop. When you are ready to end the session, pause for a moment and become aware of the world with a show of thanks ending the session.

As you become more adept at walking meditation, you can then start to utilise your senses to the world around you, especially if you are doing this outdoors. See, sense and feel the world, the wind, the air, the colours and smells around you as you become aware of what is around you.

I really see myself doing a fair bit of walking meditation now. What about you? For those on the fence, is meditation something you plan to take up soon? I have written about meditation earlier. You can read my previous articles here and here. Hopefully, this will allow me to come back and report that my meditation practice is going great guns!

Here comes Spring….

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On Tuesday, the plane of the Earth’s equator passed through the centre of the Sun’s disk. In other words, this heralded the coming of Spring in the northern hemisphere and autumn in the southern hemisphere. This movement occurs twice a year, in March and September and on these days, it is said the day and night are of equal lengths. During the rest of the year, either day or night lasts a little longer, depending on where you are in the world, because of the Earth’s tilt and this is why it starts getting darker earlier as winter progresses. Living almost on the equator, for us, almost all days are like the equinox and most days we have roughly 12 hours of light, followed by 12 hours of dark.

But the spring equinox or as it’s called in Latin, the Vernal Equinox in the northern hemisphere, traditionally marks the start of spring in many cultures. It’s the time to throw off the covers of winter and look forward to the sun and the green of spring and summer, a time for new beginnings, births and a fresh new start at life.

A number of festivals take place around this time all over the world, dating back to ancient times. Ancient Christianity links the celebration with Easter when Jesus is believed to have died and then been reborn. The link with the vernal equinox is clear as it coincided with pagan celebrations of rebirth and renewal. The Mayan calendar is famed for its spring equinox rituals at the stone-stepped pyramid at Chichen Itza, Mexico. The pyramid, where human sacrifices once took place, is made in a way that a “snake of sunlight” moves down the steps on the day of the equinox.

In Spain, the time around the start of spring has traditionally been the planting season as the ground thaws and the daylight hours become longer so crops can grow. Japan celebrates both equinoxes with national holidays, as the days are seen as a time to worship ancestors.

Indians celebrate the advent of spring with the festival of colours, Holi which signifies good triumphing over evil by the throwing of colour and coloured water over each other.

In Iran, the New Year begins on the day of the equinox and is marked with the festival of Nowruz. The Parsi community has also brought over this festival with them and I did see messages in my school Whatsapp group chat wishing each other Happy Navroz (I went to a school which is operated by a Parsi trust and there were a good significant portion of Parsis in our school, I’ve written in detail about my alma mater previously).

Ireland celebrates St. Patricks Day in the middle of March each year, which is also a spring festival.

Other countries also celebrate the coming of spring in various ways and it’s quite fascinating to read how different we are, yet beneath all the differences we have (of race, language, religion and culture), we are all intrinsically the same! Food for thought right?

I’m going to leave you with these amazing videos and photos I found online. The first is a photo released by the American National Weather Service which showed how the earth looks like on the first day of Spring.

Spring

The short video below is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who celebrated the start to spring in the Northern Hemisphere with a stunning view of Earth from sunset to sunrise.

 

Family Stories: Family Adoptions

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Following my last post, I started thinking more about what makes a woman a mum. I have also been watching this drama where a woman is forced to give up her five-year-old daughter to her sister-in-law (husband’s sister) who is childless. She has another, older daughter and is pregnant with her third child, which also happens to be a girl. Her husband had taken loans from his sister’s husband who also pressurises the couple for the adoption. The woman’s mother-in-law also forces the issue as she wants her daughter to be happy since the daughter’s mother-in-law is forcing her son to divorce her since she is childless. The only person who is on her side is the woman’s brother-in-law (husband’s brother), but he is silenced by the others in the family. At this point in the drama, the child has been handed over, but everyone is miserable. I am sure the ending will be positive, as it happens in all dramas, but this got me thinking about something that has happened in my own family.

My mum is the oldest of four girls, and when my grandmother was pregnant with her fourth child (maybe in the hope of having a boy), her sister-in-law (my grandfather’s sister) who was married, but childless offered to adopt the child if it was another girl. My aunt was born and was informally adopted by her aunt. Why informally you may ask? This was because she was betrothed at birth to a cousin who happened to have the same gotra as her aunt. Now because marriage within a gotra was prohibited, the aunt could never formally adopt her or even have her call her mum. She lived with my mum’s aunt all her life, a mere 10-minute walk from her mum’s place and used to meet her sisters often. She always knew who her parents were and used to call them mum and dad and her adopted mum and dad as aunt and uncle, but she didn’t go to the same school as her sisters and perhaps in a small way resented the hold her sisters had over her.

When she got married, it was my grandparents who gave her away and this rankled my grandaunt all her life. She was incredibly jealous of my grandmother and my mum and her sisters and would resent anytime my aunt spent with them. This went on for around 60 odd years until the grand aunt died last year.

She was a mother to my aunt in all ways that mattered but never heard her adopted daughter call her mum, while she had to hear her sister-in-law being called mum all the time. I would think the resentment she had within herself was completely justified.

Then I started thinking about my grandmother. How would she have felt, having to hand over her child to someone else, even though she was her own sister-in-law? Would she have felt pressurised by her family to give her up? Or did she do it with full consciousness?

The person who was most stressed was my aunt according to me. She was constantly under pressure between her mum and adoptive mum and had to play a balancing game all her life. It is only now, when she is past 60 and her adoptive mum has passed on, that she is planning a holiday to stay with her birth mum for a month. How sad is that! She had to always watch her thoughts, words and actions in case her adoptive mum took offence in something she said or did, especially when it related to her birth family.

This situation was something I’d lived with my whole life and was not something I really thought about till now because this was normal in my family. But watching the drama and then relating it to what happened/is happening in my own family made me see it in a different light, one that is more emphatic, I hope.

I hope sharing this family story helps you see adoptive families, especially those who have been adopted by their own family a little differently. Life is never black or white and this is one situation where the shades of grey are more prominent.