You've decided to visit friends on the first day of the Lunar New Year, and as soon as you step out your front door, you turn right and head east.
According to Chinese superstition, you just made a bad move -- and could end up having bad luck for the rest of the year. If you want to visit friends, you should walk south as soon as you leave the house.
Such traditional superstitions still persist in Taiwan today, although people tend not to follow them so rigidly. Some simply observe them out of habit, while others just want to stay on the safe side.
Beginning on Lunar New Year's eve, families hustle to finish cleaning before 4pm -- the gathering time for the big family dinner. Three traditional dishes that must appear on the table are fish, leaf mustard cabbage and dumplings or fish balls.
Wu Chang-yu (
Fish, pronounced yu in Mandarin, is a homonym of the character for "surplus," Wu said. Eating fish during the Lunar New Year's eve dinner will ensure that the family has "enough to spare for the year," he said.
Wu said that the fish must not be completely eaten, but rather the head and the tail should be left as surplus.
The leaf mustard cabbage is called "the year-round vegetable" in Chinese, Wu said. In Chinese traditions, the year is a terrible monster that preys on people. Those who aren't eaten get to live another year. Therefore, to celebrate surviving another year, people eat the leaf mustard cabbage, Wu said.
The third dish, dumplings or fish balls, represent the reunion of family members, Wu added.
Glutinous rice
Nian gao, a cake made from glutinous rice, is also eaten throughout the Lunar New Year holiday, Wu said. Sweet cakes are used to appease the gods, while turnip and taro flavored cakes are for one's ancestors, he added.
In Hoklo, the sticky cake is called guei, a homonym of the character for "elegance" or "an honored position," Wu said.
Parents often shoo their children away from the stove while they are steaming gueis, because loud children are said to be disturbing the elegant air, Wu said.
Women who are having their periods are not allowed to approach the cake while it is being cooked either, Wu added.
"I believe this superstition comes from the fact that these cakes are hard to steam. Sometimes it is hard on the outside while the inside is still inedible," Wu said. "Therefore mothers don't want children disturbing them while they're making the cakes."
Late night
On Lunar New Year's Eve, everyone stays up with the lights completely on inside the house to welcome in the New Year. Firecrackers are also set off to scare away monsters.
Wu said that firecrackers are set off for environmental reasons as well. The potassium nitrate in the firecrackers kills germs and makes the surrounding air dry during the wet winter months, Wu said.
It is especially important to have dry surroundings because it is taboo to have wet things on New Year's Day, he said. Wetness represents failure and bad luck for the following year. Therefore, laundry cannot be done on the day, nor can baths be taken. That must all be done before New Year's Day, Wu said.
In addition, there should be no sweeping, out of fear of sweeping good luck and fortune out the door, and no cutting with knives and scissors, for fear of cutting off fortune.
Leftovers are not thrown out and garbage is not taken out for the same reasons. Food should be cut with thread and not knives.
Despite all the taboos, though, Pamela Peng (
"It's true that they don't take the garbage out during New Year's, but it's probably because the garbage collectors are on vacation, not because they're afraid of throwing out luck," Peng said.
Wu said that when he was younger, traffic police never handed out violations during the first three days of the New Year or cracked down on gambling, out of fear of bringing a person bad luck.
"Now the police give out tickets anyway if you park your car illegally," Wu said.
Wu said that sweeping is allowed after the second day of the New Year, but that the dirt must be swept inwards, from the front door to the middle of the house in order to "collect" fortune.
A mother surnamed Hsu said she felt less of the New Year atmosphere nowadays compared to before, when the streets in front of her house were full of pinball games, ring tosses, and food vendors.
"I think it's also because we held such high expectations for the Lunar New Year before," Hsu said. "For some, it was the only opportunity to wear new clothes and receive money in red envelopes."
Now, children wear new clothes all the time and get ample allowances, she said, so New Year isn't as special for them.
"I still follow some of the old superstitions out of habit, though, since I heard them when I was growing up," Hsu said.
When you're ready to open up your store or go back to work after the New Year holiday, the seventh day is the best day to do it this year, Wu said.
It is taboo, however to wait till after the ninth day of the New Year to go back to work, because the ninth day is the god of heaven's birthday.
"Those who start working after the god's birthday are lazy and disrespectful to the god of heaven," he said.
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS