February 4, 200521 yr FEBRUARY 9: Happy Chinese New Year 4072! The Year of the Rooster Next Wednesday marks the actual day of the biggest holiday on the Chinese Calendar, Chinese New Year. And it's a big deal here in Thailand, where many people have Chinese blood. In fact, the political and business elite are comprised of Thai-Chinese people. Thailand is lucky to have not just 1, not just 2, but * 3 * New Years to celebrate: the Western one January 1st, the Chinese New Year (a floating holiday based on the lunar calendar), and the traditional Thai New Year of Songkhran in mid-April. The first two are really nice, though the third has become an exercise in barbaric excess. The most common and best-known version of the lunar calendar used in this part of the world is based on 12-year cycles, each year bearing the name of a different animal, those names repeating each 12-year cycle. Thus, this year is The Year of the Rooster. My own birth year, 1951, was The Year of the Rabbit. Every person's 12th-year birthday, i.e., the one when his or her animal is repeated, is regarded as both significant and auspicious. Because of this, 2011 will be my next big birthday, when I turn 60 -- assuming the bus doesn't succeed in mowing me down first! And one's 60th birthday -- called "5th-cycle birthday" -- is especially auspicious. For that matter, so are one's following cycle birthdays. I suppose that's because making it to 60 is in and of itself some sort of achievement, and it only gets better after that. I remember when His Majesty the King turned 72; the nation went happily crazy. (Everyone is hoping to be celebrating His Majesty's 7th-cycle birthday a few years hence.) Though I don't have the feeling about these cycles in my bones in the same way as Asians do, I've been here long enough -- nearly 18 out of the past nearly 20 years -- that I have become imbued with the spirit to some degree, so I'm looking forward to my Mother's next birthday, which will be her 72nd (hey -- she married young; I was born when she was just 17!). Her 6th-cycle birthday; it's hard to believe. If you're anywhere near a Chinese community in particular or any Asian community in general this Chinese New Year, go join in the festivities; folks here really get into celebrating the occasion. I've already seen 2 dragon dances here in Washington Square the past few days, dances performed to celebrate the new year. --BangkokAtoZ 2005-02-04 http://bangkokatoz.com/The_Rounds_04FEB2005.htm
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