The Year of the Fire Rooster
It’s 2017. The year of the Rooster. On Saturday, millions around the world celebrated Chinese New Year by launching fireworks and confetti bombs into the air. We were in NYC for the weekend, so we headed over to Chinatown to join festivities.
Chinese New Year is based on the ancient lunar calendar, when the first day of the New Year falls on the new moon, somewhere between January 21 and February 20. On Saturday January 28, 2017, the Year of the Fire Rooster kicked off and runs through February 15, 2018. In Chinese astrology, each zodiac year is associated with one of twelve animal signs and one of five elements: Gold (Metal), Wood, Water, Fire, or Earth. Animal-element combinations occur only once every 60 years.
Manhattan’s Chinatown is one of nine Chinatowns in NYC and the city’s most populous with 600,000 inhabitants. It’s also home to the largest Chinese population in the Western Hemisphere. It’s easy to find, sitting tucked between Little Italy, Tribeca and the Lower East Side.
Saturday was a chilly morning, but we were excited to join the festivities. We bundled up and made our way to Mott Street, the epicenter and beating heart of Chinatown. At 10am, the streets were already bustling with crowds of people. Colorful streamers strewn between buildings, storefronts overflowing with paper mache puppets and red silk lanterns. Drums echoed in the distance.
We learned that the first day of each Chinese New Year is dedicated to welcoming the deities of heaven and earth. Honoring ancestors and warding off evil spirits. Temples were full of practitioners lighting incense, offering gifts and celebrating family, so we decided to join in. We stopped off at the Eastern States Buddhist Temple, tucked into a tiny store front at 64 Mott Street. Blink and you might miss it. It’s a cozy space with two elaborate altars adorned with orchids and fruit. For a small donation, we lit an incense stick and received a small bound fortune scroll. In silence, we set our intentions, gave thanks and headed on our way.
As we wandered back into the streets, the rhythmic beat of drums and cymbals grew louder and we soon stumbled upon a pair of dancers dressed in enormous paper mache lion heads with long flowing fabric tails. We learned that the lion dance is the most popular celebration on the first day of Chinese New Year. In a long-standing tradition, business owners set out leafy greens and and offer up red envelopes filled with money. As the lions grace each storefront, they perform ceremonious and eloquent dances to ensure each business an auspicious year ahead. There is something hauntingly poetic about Chinese New Year. The practice of ancient ceremonial rituals handed down through generations blended with the summoning of peace, love and prosperity for the future.
We followed the lion dancers and drummers for quite some time, celebrating with fellow revelers, shooting confetti cannons and laughing a lot. Then we headed inside to sip some tea, warm our souls and fill our bellies with some delicious New Year’s dumplings.
Happy Chinese New Year!
