Chinese New Year

Our New year celebrations timed to the Gregorian calender I’ve always found pretty dull.

Year in year out it is just a repetitious formula of a garishly excessive fireworks, with battalions of drunken youths roaming the city streets blowing mindless sounds on cheap plastic horns. I’m sure that one day the Harbour Bridge under the tons of ordinance piled up on it and exploded, is going to melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew.

I mean, is this sight really worth $10m up in smoke – or $2.00? As for watching the fireworks on tv, forget that. Apart from the white out overexposure the explosions cause on the screen, why not just replay the previous year’s fireworks, or those the year before or before that? It doesn’t matter which as they are all practically identical. Could anyone tell the difference?

How about trying something different? Giant 3D holographs projected into the sky for example. I don’t know how possible that is  but it might be and the imaginings for the imagery are endless. Blue whales undulating overhead to whale song for example. Or unfolding flowers, or schools of goldfish shimmering  golden flanks as they swim through the sky. Even have some holographic exploding fireworks as an ironic inclusion to show what we aren’t missing. I don’t know. Festival people are better at thinking up these things, but those ideas I’d like to see.

Or as good or maybe better, how about those spectacular lit massed drones from the Korean winter Olympics?  They morphed spectacularly from one giant kinetic form into another. A thousand co-ordinated lit drones zooming from one star-like constellation to another! Even on tv it was jaw dropping.

Put Fortunato and his repetitiously garish fireworks out to pasture. It’s 15 years overdue. Enough of this every year is the “best ever“ fireworks. They are diminishing returns.

By contrast,  a lot more happens during Chinese new year on a smaller and more involving scale.

Chinese New Year is timed around the phases of the moon, so the celebration dates vary year to year, and they last for 15 days. The first day  begins on the new moon that appears between 21^st January and 20th February. Each day of the 15 has a different traditional practice, with the last day celebrated as the Lantern Festival, when families walk the streets carrying lanterns.

According to tales and legends, Chinese New Year began with a mythical beast called the Nian. Nian would eat villagers, especially children.

Understandably the villagers soon became well and truly jack of this beast, so one year all the villagers hid from him. Before they went into hiding an old man appeared and told them he was going to stay the night in the village and get revenge on the Nian. The villagers thought he was crazy to risk this. Undeterred by their warnings, that night the old man set off firecrackers and hung red papers up on the houses.

The next day, the villagers came back to their town and saw that nothing was destroyed, and the old man, who they now considered a diety, looking just fine. The villagers then understood that the Nian was afraid of the colour red and of loud noises. So when the New Year was next due, the villagers would wear red clothes, and hang red lanterns and red scrolls on windows and doors.  People also let off firecrackers to frighten away the Nian. From then on, Nian the beast never came to the village again.

The New Year is the major holiday in China and has strongly influenced lunar new year celebrations of China’s neighbouring cultures, including the Korean New Year (seol), the Tếtt of Vietnam, and the Losar of Tibet.

Since the long closure of George st in Sydney for the laying of a couple of two inch wide light rail tracks, there has been no twilight parade. That was a popular part of the festivities. Throngs of performers would visit from China to be part of it, and consequently some became photographic subjects of mine. But while the scale has lessened for the present there is still plenty of interest.

These images are clickable on and will enlarge to full page.

Glowing arches and lanterns :

A balmy February evening and Mian the beast is kept well away by the light of these magical lanterns :

Silken clad girls from the parade settle in a throng in the midst of a crowd to watch the post parade fireworks :

Drummer girls from Guandong make a mesmerising combination of colour and motion and sound :

After flying this giant dragon for an extended time the dance crew shed their skin, totally exhausted after giving it their all :

Lion dancers in Haymarket at the conclusion of their performance :

The scariness, noise and wonder of the lions’ performance is still on the kids’ faces :

Lion and dragon dancing is extremely athletic work. Here, watched over by their fierce charges, a troop in Haymarket are re-charging their energies between performances :

Girls from the twilight parade take in the sights :

Post parade socialising :

Magical dolls and their artist puppeteers returning to their lodgings :

Lanterns of entombed warriors were equally magical :

Chinese artist Xia Nan created these full scale soldier lanterns inspired by China’s buried terracotta warriors. Their faces are all moulds taken from the actual terracotta army that was buried with the emperor. Sydney, with its large population of Australians of Chinese descent, has a celebration of Lunar New Year that is the largest outside of China.

Two girls in cheongsams in Dixon st were handing out Hungbao, the tradtional red packet given on New Year, particularly to children. They always contain money – but never of odd number amounts! In this instance inside were gold chocolate coins.

Some young girls had assembled on a small dias and in full voice were performing a song in a cappella. They brought a smile and a tear to the crowd. What also made me smile me was their choice of song: “I still call Australia home.” The lyrics eg. “I’ve been to cities that never close down..” and ” no matter how far and how wide that I roam” was  funny, as if these tiny girls were all world weary travellers, used to the nightlife and become jaded with it and longing for home. The reality of course is that in their very young, untravelled lives they have only ever been tucked up in bed safe and warm by 8.30pm!  The girl at front, after she introduced everyone and the song in equally fluent Chinese and English received some spontaneous applause for her fluency. Her separate language skills meant little to her but young children are enviably so good at learning languages.

One of the stalls had a chopstick test where you had to pick up marbles and convey them to a bowl. You had 30 seconds to pick up as many as you could, and it was really difficult. And funny. After a lifetime handling chopsticks.the father didn’t manage to pick up any. Understandably neither did his young son. The young boy, while unsuccessful, is still pretty good with chopsticks.The successful girl holding the marble was the stall holder. It took me a full minute to pick one up and put it in the bowl and I was quite chuffed to exceed a native user. Where else but at CNY are you going to see a specifically cultural challenge like this?

A stall offering paper umbrellas amongst other things :

Trays of sparkly things :

A slice of Sydney on the steps of the Town Hall, waiting for the parade to begin… 

A Thai girl wearing silks for the new year hangs green coconuts at the entrance to her shop. What you’ll often find hanging from the doorway of a business or home on New Year can be any type of green produce, like lettuce or bok choy :

Lions race through the Chinese Gardens…

…while their musical accompaniment makes heroic efforts to keep up :

The red cards gathered around dancers who are between performances are where members of the public have written down their hopes and dreams for the new year. They follow the tradition of red scrolls being hung in doorwars and windows to ward off Mian, the beast of New Year.

After the dancers’ performance their audience dispersed. But for me it was what I had been waiting for. I followed them discreetly and saw that they had paused on their way out to take some photos of their own. I couldn’t have known that they would do that, but in any case I had put myself in a position should something, anything, happen. In the photo is summed up much I love about Chinese culture. Their long tradition of aesthetics, their gardens, the music of their architecture, the poeticism of the women. Similarly with Japan, Korea and the SE Asian countries.

These red cards are written variously in English and Chinese by members of the public holding their hopes and wishes for the new year.. They were hung from various doorways and entrances in the Chinese Gardens in Sydney. Here some people have paused to read their contents.