Don’t cut your hair and no sweeping – how to boost your luck in the lunar new year
With the lunar new year now upon us, there’s no better time than this festival to lean into your full Chinese selves and understand what this season requires of you, and what superstitions you may want to take on board. Growing up in a Chinese family in Singapore, my year was consistently marked by various traditional celebrations and rituals – and never more so at the start of the new year.
The lunar new year is about sweeping away the old and welcoming in new and positive energies, such as good health and wealth. Also known as the spring festival, it marks the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar calendar. The first day of the new year starts with the new moon and ends on the full moon. The first two days of the new year are when I mostly focus my attention, faithfully following the long list of dos and don’ts.
According to Chinese custom, no dusting or sweeping is allowed during the 15 days of the new year period… otherwise, you will be sweeping away good fortune and prosperity. While I’m only fussy about this on the first couple of days of the new year, I still stick to the tradition of no haircuts during the full season of 15 days. The Chinese word for hair is a homonym for prosperity. So cutting hair means you risk cutting off fortune and wealth. This is also why we don’t wash our hair on the first day of the new year; we don’t want to wash away what the year might bring.
Wearing red clothes is also seen as ensuring good luck and protection against evil spirits. Black and white, the colours of mourning, must be avoided. Don’t take out the rubbish and stay away from lending money: you will be breaking your connection with good fortune, and it will be flowing away for the rest of the year. And no crying and arguments on the first day; it could mean conflicts throughout the year.
The week leading up to the first day of the new year will have been full of preparations: meal planning, dusting and cleaning. This Year of the Fire Horse, according to Chinese metaphysics, is full of momentum and bold transformation, but also unruly and combustible. The combination of the horse zodiac animal and the fire element is considered rare and intense. One of my friends commented that “it makes me want to go lie down”.
When I was growing up, during the lunar phases of the new moon and full moon, we had to eat vegetarian food for the day – a traditional practice in Buddhist culture. The numerous gods in Chinese culture (the Goddess of Mercy, the Goddess of the Sea, the Kitchen God are just the tip of the iceberg) remind me of Christian saints – St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals, the environment, and ecology; St Jude is the go-to for lost causes; and St Cecilia for music and musicians. There’s a god for everything.
The Malaysian-born American comedian Ronny Chieng has a whole stand-up section about our obsession with the “God of Money” (Caishen). When my brother moved into his new house, he rolled a pineapple into the house upon opening the door, symbolising the arrival of prosperity and good fortune. I have heard of some people rolling a pineapple into every single corner of their new home – for the fullest and most thorough blessings, and also because it’s just quite funny.
Myths, history and legends are threaded into the customs and stories passed down through the generations. Asian children are told off for pointing at the moon as it’s disrespectful to point at the Moon Goddess who lives there. Groceries must never be placed on the floor; they have to go on the table. Not just for hygiene reasons, but also out of respect for the food. Of course, there is always a symbolic meaning alongside these commonsense practices. Putting food on the floor is interpreted as treating blessings carelessly, which is believed to bring bad luck. The Kitchen God is always watching.
It was while idly scrolling through Instagram that I was stopped short by a post that seemed to know all these things about me. “So you want to be more Chinese, here are the 10 things you need to know”. Why was it asking me to be Chinese? I am Chinese! Yes, I do all of the things in the post and more. After some rooting around, I was introduced to the new trend for Chinamaxxing – people who are now declaring themselves to be at a very Chinese time in their lives.
At first, I wasn’t sure if it was racism or cultural appropriation. But Chinamaxxing does, in truth, seem to be a celebration of Chinese culture rather than a criticism. Sherry Zhu, a Chinese-American TikTok content creator, was influential in popularising the trend. Laugh-out-loud memes, informative posts about traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), absurdist humour – 5,000 years of Chinese culture in a meme – possibly 8,000 years if this archaeologist is proved right. How incredible is that?
When my Chinese family and friends visit us in London, they always whisper and ask me for a glass of warm water, like it’s a dirty secret. Thanks to Chinamaxxing, everyone and their pekinese are now well aware of the benefits of warm water. Irrationally, I now feel self-conscious when I’m drinking warm water. Even when I’m all alone in the kitchen.
My evolution into a full-blown Chinese auntie, however, has been gradual. When I hit perimenopause, I turned to using dong quai (also known as female ginseng) to help me through brain fog and hot flushes. Remembering the wisdom exchanged between my grandmother, mother and aunties, I started to switch my Chinese frequency to maximum. My collection of medicated oil expanded. To my lone tiger balm ointment, I have now added Axe brand universal oil, red flower oil, and nutmeg oil. In Chinese medicine, there is an oil for every ailment. And yes, I do abide by the adage that if it still hurts, then just apply more.
For all fully-fledged middle-aged Chinese aunties, food and wellness are one and the same. Food contains energetic properties, and the yin-yang bodily balance must be maintained. Cucumber is cooling. Fried food is heaty. Rice goes with everything, and for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Generic long grain rice tastes of nothing, but fragrant jasmine rice? Now that is the king of rice.
Food is central to Chinese culture, and it’s often on our minds. When the post-apocalyptic series The Last of Us was on air, and people reeled from the Cordyceps fungus that turned humans into violent creatures, my immediate thought was, “Eat the cordyceps, goddamit! They’re really tasty in a herbal soup.” Cordyceps is a highly prized traditional Chinese medicine.
In more than 25 years of living in London, it hasn’t always been easy to live my Chinese identity under the Western gaze. So it’s liberating to see Gen-Zers embracing Chinese culture, their curiosity and interest encouraging me to live my full Chinese-ness in broad daylight. Hopefully, Chinamaxxing is more than just a fad and will last beyond the Year of the Fire Horse. I want people to discover the richness of Chinese history, culture and diaspora.
Some of my Chinese auntie ways are specific to my Straits-Chinese heritage, and every Westerner indulging in a spot of Chinamaxxing today should know we aren’t one amorphous mass; we come from different dialect groups, have different customs and food. My ancestors came from Hong Kong Island, Kinmen Island in Taiwan and Fujian region in China. In the 18th century, they ended up in Singapore and Indonesia for survival and trade. Even though they assimilated into the local Malay communities, they kept alive their Chinese traditions, language and culture.
If there’s one thing to take away from all of this Chinese flexing, it is how migrant groups can successfully integrate and transform within a host culture without ever losing their ancestral soul. I am all for everyone getting to know Chinese culture and appreciating its breadth and nuance. Perhaps the fire horse will ride us into a revolution of multiculturalism, with coexisting cultural identities within societies. It might happen. As long as we don’t cut our hair.
