2025, animals, Family, Food, Gatherings, holidays

Happy Chinese New Year!

45 Comments

YA and I celebrate the lunar new year, although not as robustly as we used to.  When she was younger, we did a big house cleaning running up to the new year, put up a lot of decorations and had folks over for a nice dinner of Chinese.  I used to cook all that food on my own but over the years, we moved to getting takeaway from our favorite Chinese restaurant. Since the pandemic, we’ve scaled way back on some of this.

It turns out that this coming year is not just Year of the Snake but Year of the Wood Snake.  Apparently every 60 years or so, the Year of the Snake aligns with a Yisi year – which corresponds to heavenly stems and branches.  Hence Wood Snake.

Folks born during a snake year (1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001,2013 and 2025) are associated with intelligence and resilience.  Additional characteristics for a Wood Snake (1905, 1965 and 2025) are wisdom, intuition and renewal.  I’ve seen a couple of headlines this week saying that a snake year for shedding negative energy.  A good image for a snake, especially as the wood snake is linked with renewal.

According to a feng shui master who has been giving interviews, “The Snake — with a strong fire element, along with some metal and earth elements — is a zodiac sign that can cause significant clashes and conflicts. We need to be mindful of accidents as we approach the Snake Year. The overall atmosphere in the world will become slightly more chaotic.”  Personally I don’t think you need a lunar new year prediction to come up with that….

Do you know your Chinese zodiac sign?  Any favorite Chinese food this week?

45 thoughts on “Happy Chinese New Year!”

  1. I know it as Water Dragon. It’s “frightening” that there are or were (assuming deaths) about 100,000,000 humans born who are like me!
    Egg rolls with apologies to The Birds.

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    1. Every couple of years, YA decides she has to make dumplings for New Year’s. I did actually buy her some plastic crimpers so that the dumplings look really nice and fancy. She makes kind of a big production out of it.

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  3. I am a Fire Sheep. I know my adoptive Mom was a Snake and Dad was a Rooster.

    Chinese food is a favorite not only at our house but among my friends–just about every time my poetry group meets, we end up having dinner at the Tea House near the U of M. Favorites? So many, but eggplant in garlic sauce, Szechuan green beans, and kung pao tofu spring to mind…The much-mourned Evergreen on Nicollet used to have the BEST veggie potstickers, and delicious vegetarian won ton soup, orange mock chicken, and Three Cup Tofu .

    –Crow Girl

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  5. Robin and I are both rats. With no good take-out place conveniently near, most of the “Chinese” we consume is either stir-fry or fried rice that I make. The principal difference between homemade and take-out is that homemade contains more and a greater variety of vegetables.

    Regarding the zodiac, coincidentally one of the books I happened to read this week was The Full Moon Coffee Shop, which features zodiacal observations from talking cats.

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    1. Looks like there is a second book in that series…Best Wishes from the Full Moon Coffee Shop. Books translated from Japanese seems to be quite popular in the independent bookstores these days. I gave my sister one for Christmas called We’ll Prescribe You a Cat.

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      1. I read We’ll Prescribe You a Cat when we were in Kyoto. As it happens, our hotel was on the same street, Tominokoji, as the clinic supposedly was.

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      1. YA is a pig. She doesn’t like this and so far most of her growing up years we’ve had to say year of the boar instead of year of the pig.

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    2. “The rat is considered clever, resourceful, and adaptable.. People born in the year of the Rat are intelligent, charming, quick-witted, practical, ambitious, and good at economizing as well as social activities.. Rats are cheerful, sociable, and tenacious people, who thrive as part of a group.. The Chinese zodiac rat holds a significant place in Chinese culture.. “

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  7. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    My year is the snake and I have forgotten anything I ever knew about it.

    The Asia Mall in Eden Prairie which opened several years ago has become the center of New Year celebrations here. On the 25 and 26th of January they had a big celebration in the Mall in which Asian ethnicities were represented by children’s choirs, dancers, and food. It was a big deal here. A successful venture, that Asia Mall has become a real magnet. I hope this link takes you to the article from the Eden Prairie Local News.

    https://eplocalnews.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8f76dfa61323ee3b88bfbecac&id=bbbc7b0346&e=e379e22507

    My understanding is that this mall has become a model for other ethnic commerce. Apparently an African consortium has now bought a failed building in the NW sector of the Cities with the intention of creating a similar mall to sell African goods.

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    2. The Chinese zodiac welcomes the Year of the Wood Snake on January 29, 2025, marking a period of transformation, wisdom, and adaptability. The Snake is known for its intelligence, strategy, and charm, while the Wood element brings flexibility and creativity.

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  8. We were spoiled for life in Winnipeg with Chinese food. I counted up at least 80 Chinese restaurants when we lived there. Canada has large numbers of Chinese immigrants, many from Hong Kong. In their restaurants they were cooking for themselves, not just the general public.

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      1. You made me remember a time that I was in Singapore and the night before my client was gonna come in, I asked my guide to take me to a typical Malay restaurant. I’m pretty sure I was the only white person who’ve been in there for quite some time. Food was excellent. And hot.

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    2. There used to be a Chinese restaurant in West St. Paul, which was pretty typical and featured those paper placemats that had menu choices printed on them. The owners were actually Korean, though, and if customers were in the know they could ask for a Korean menu.

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  10. If I remember correctly, I’m a boar. I don’t remember any details about that. I think I learned that from a placemat in a Chinese restaurant.

    I love egg rolls and fried rice. I’m happy with some sautéed shrimp next to a pile of fried rice with a couple of egg rolls. I know it’s not an actual dish, but that’s what I like.

    I’m feeling very grateful to VS right now.

    I’ll have to catch up on the blog when I get back!

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      1. Yes, that “masculinization” of the years has happened. The year of the chicken is generally portrayed by an animal with large wattles, and the year of the pig is not a show with piglets, but a boar with something else that looks large.

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  11. I am a Dragon – supposedly independent (true), full of energy (a lot of the time), charismatic (?), intelligent and gifted (hopefully), impatient (unfortunately true), creative (not so much), naturally lucky (not so much), and with a sense of justice (yes!).

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  12. I was born in the year of the Rabbit. My spouse, in the year of the snake. When we lived in Taiwan, older people would refer to their birth year by its sign (and leave you to figure out, yourself, how many years that made them). Younger people used the Year of the Republic of China (in which 1911 is year 1). We were there, variously, from 1976 to 2018, so saw a lot of change in how the holidays were marked. Mostly, though, we remember the joy and excitement.

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  15. i sent my happy chinese years wishes off to my key friends and contacts and got a responseasking me to help introduce a medical rehab company
    crutches walkers wheelchairs etc to the usa market
    i might be headed back to my chinese workd a little more or a lot more very soon. i think the offer comes because i had discussed the possibility of having a new concept i developed for a walker snd wheelchair with rhis guy and rinded him we have a great window wih boomers all aging so noticeably right now
    woo hoo
    im a big wonton guy
    also fried rice
    baby bok choy is a favorite
    they do vegetables so sell almost anything is good
    finally got fofu going in the right direction

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  16. I’m a dragon, Kelly is a rabbit. According to one website, we’re both “intuitive, gentle, and clever”?

    We like Chinese food too. Crab Rangoon, potstickers, sweet and sour pork, Orange chicken, General Taos Chicken, egg rolls, ect.
    When we got married, one of my moms friends, was from Laos, and she made us egg rolls for the reception. They were the best ever.

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  17. Like Renee….Earth Dog.

    I love many differeent kinds of food, but I have to admit I love the sort of Chinese food you get in the classic American Chinese restaurants. Give me sweet & sour chicken with a little fried rice and I’m in heaven.

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