Please welcome our guest blogger, author Janet Wong! Chinese New Year 2016 is coming up on February 8th, so we asked Janet to share her Lunar New Year family traditions. If you want to learn more, Janet has listed resources including books, videos and links at the bottom.
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Ice Cubes at the Door: A Survey of Lunar New Year Traditions
I grew up celebrating the lunar new year mainly with the Chinese traditions of my father and his parents—firecrackers at midnight, the Chinatown parade, red envelopes, eating fish for wealth and lo hon jai, the monk’s noodle dish made with 18 different vegetables, for health. What I remember most, though, was our whole family frantically cleaning the house the evening before, to get rid of all the dirt and bad luck of the past year and make room for good luck in the new year. This illustration by Yangsook Choi from our book This Next New Year perfectly captures the frenzy:
