Happy Chinese New Year of the Pig! This is the 4716th Chinese year.
You may have looked at this image and wondered what the heck I was thinking, but there is a real theme here. In China and around Asia people have just started a 10 day celebration of the Lunar New Year. When I lived in Hong Kong we greeted each other with “Gung Hei Fat Choi!” for the New Year. The factories close down and everybody goes home to celebrate with their families.
Chinese astrology is different from Western astrology. Instead of the sign changing every month, the sign changes once per year. If you are born in the Year of the Dog (like me) then everybody else born that year is also a Dog. Then every 12 years it repeats the cycle. So you can have Pigs who are 12, 24, 36, and 48 years old. (etc.) Pigs are considered compassionate, diligent and generous.
At the Lunar New Year, Chinese families celebrate with firecrackers, Lion Dances, sweeping out their house, and eating Long Noodles. (for long life.) Young people who have gone to work in the city, crowd the trains to go home for multi-generational banquets. They also go to temples to light incense and say a prayer for the New Year. The color RED is considered lucky, and young people receive Red envelopes with money from the parents and elders.
While Sophie and I were in China over our January 1st New Year, we discovered that in the cities the young people have appropriated some of our holidays, like Christmas and Valentines Day! So feel free to celebrate Chinese New Year…it’s the biggest bash on the planet!
The photo above is of two ladies I spotted at the Forbidden City on our first full day in Beijing. I’ve added some of our fabrics to make a Chinese New Year collage. Gung Hei Fat Choi!
Sincerely,
Luana and Paul
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eQuilter Classroom & Travel Calendar:
Feb 14-16 – ‘Love Your Mother‘ exhibit at Mexico Quilt Festival in Mexico City
Feb 20-23 – QuiltCon – Nashville TN
Feb 24 – Lynn Koolish for CQC – in eQuilter Classroom
Mar 28-30 – ‘Love Your Mother‘ exhibit at Spring Quilt Festival in Chicago
Apr 1 – Quilting Arts TV, Cleveland
Apr 12-14 – Jean Wells for FRCQ workshop – in eQuilter Classroom
June 27-30 – Jane Tenorio-Coscarelli workshop – eQuilter Classroom
July 11-14, 2019 – Cindy Lohbeck – Shibori, Ice-Dyeing and Ombre Dyeing Workshops @ eQuilter – REGISTRATION NOW OPEN
