Oink! It’s the Year of the Pig

The poor pig always seems to get a bad rap. Despite lechon and ham being the stars of the festive table, pigs are looked down on and evoke some pretty negative connotations.

You’re called a pig when you eat too much or when you’re sloppy, since pigs are seen as creatures wallowing in mud, indiscriminately devouring anything and everything they find. Pigs are regarded as slow and lazy. Pigs are abhorred and forbidden in some religions, and in the Flower Power/Black Panther days in the United States, police were called "pigs," the ultimate enemy.

In the legend of the Lord Buddha summoning the animals to him before he departed from the Earth — which is the basis for the Chinese zodiac — the pig comes in last, behind 11 other swifter animals (the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster and dog).

Thus, as the Year of the Dog closes and we welcome the Year of the Pig (or Boar), we complete one cycle of the zodiac that began on Feb. 19, 1996 with the Year of the Rat.

The Chinese generally do not have such a negative view of the pig. Aside from being a great source of food, the pig is seen, in terms of astrology, as the epitomé of honesty, steadfastness and generosity.

This is the year of the Fire Pig, running from Feb. 18, 2007 to February 6, 2008, and is also known as the Year of the Golden Pig, or jin zhu, regarded as a most auspicious time. It occurs only once every 60 years in a full cycle of the zodiac, which involves not just the 12 animals but also the five elements — earth, metal, water, wood, and fire.

How the Fire Pig came to be regarded as the Golden Pig has roots in history and phonetics. Writing in Tulay, the fortnightly digest published by the Tsinoy organization Kaisa, Wesley Chua relates:

"In 621 AD, Tang Emperor Wu De attempted to make sense of or standardize the confusing monetary exchange. First, he abolished the monetary system used during the Sui Dynasty and adopted the Western Han system to standardize monetary values. The Chinese began using zhu (ingots) as the means of exchange, and this standardization gave rise to the long, prosperous and peaceful reign of the Tang Dynasty."

Because of this, 627 AD, the first year of the reign of Zheng Guan in the Tang Dynasty, became known as the jin zhu (gold ingot) year. It so happened that that was a Fire Pig year, and the character for pig (zhu) is a homonym for ingot (also zhu). Folk tradition thus turned the jin zhu (gold ingot) year into the jin zhu (golden pig) year, and because it was a most auspicious year in the Tang Dynasty, tradition equated the Fire Pig year with the Golden Pig year.

In Chinese tradition, the New Year or Spring Festival is a time for families to come together for this most important of festivals. Like Thanksgiving in the United States and Holy Week here, all roads lead to home and hearth. This family gathering naturally means a culinary feast, with meat — pork and chicken especially — figuring prominently on the menu. And no, it is not true that you should not eat pork in the Year of the Pig, or chicken in the Year of the Rooster, or beef in the Year of the Ox.

Rice cakes in many forms are prominent on the table. Tikoy, or sweet glutinous rice cake, is favored because of its sweetness, and the stickiness symbolizing cohesiveness of the family. In the southern provinces, especially Fujian where most of the Tsinoys have roots, rice cakes with yeast are favored because the rising action of yeast – huat – signifies prosperity, or huat tsai. In Cantonese, that is the overused term "fat choy."

Incidentally, the first part of that overused greeting, "kung hei", means felicitations or congratulations. In Hokkien it is pronounced "kiong hee;" in Mandarin or pu tung hua it’s "kong xi."

When people talk about "lucky colors" for the year, bear in mind that, whatever the zodiac year may be, red and gold are always auspicious colors, and white is the color of death and funerals. While black is not the color of mourning for the Chinese, just remember that the point here is to have bright and festive atmosphere. Thus, although the year starts on a new moon, or the darkest day, your surroundings should be bright.

For children and unmarried people, this is the time to receive your "lucky money" in those little red packets. Because the celebration traditionally lasts until the 15th day of the first month, when the moon is bright and full, you have two weeks to fatten your pockets as you go around visiting relatives and friends, paying your respects or "pai ni" to those more senior than you.

Feng shui and geomancy practitioners seem to agree that the corpulence of the pig indicates a generally good and prosperous time this Year of the Pig. To find out what’s in store for your animal sign, STARweek has its annual reading for all 12 signs in today’s issue. But this, like all other years, will be what you make of it. So eat and make merry, but on Monday, go back to work. — Doreen G. Yu