For our Filipino-Chinese folks, Chinese New Year is an important cultural tradition. They want to start the new year right so that the whole year would be lucky, peaceful, and prosperous.
Chinese New Year comes much earlier than usual this year. The festival usually falls around February, but this 2023, it’s going to be celebrated on Sunday, January 22. The reason for this is because the celebration is determined by the Chinese Lunar Calendar, which signals the beginning of spring.
Year 2023 is the Year of the Water Rabbit. This animal is known to be calm, a far cry from year 2022’s tiger, which is aggressive. “Rabbits are associated with love, caring, sex, romance, luxury, and enjoyment of life,” notable geomancer and Feng Shui expert Master Hanz Cua, tells us in our recent interview for Pamilya Talk.
Water rabbits are seen as gentle and amicable so there is chance for the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine to simmer down. “Hopefully,” he says. “Hindi na ganoon kainit ang ulo nila.”
The negative side about rabbits is that they don’t have loyalty. “Pwedeng magkaroon ng infidelity or cheating sa relationship, both sa personal life at sa business,” he says.
Here are tips from Master Hanz on how to attract good luck and fortune this Chinese New Year:
1. Wear blue and add touches of this color in your home and workspace. This is considered the luckiest color in the Year of the Water Rabbit. The color is also believed to promote clear thinking and communication and enhance honesty and openness.
2. Homefront
- Make sure your house is well-lit even before Chinese New Year. Replace burnt out or flickering lightbulbs and make sure they’re clean.
- Do a general cleaning. Declutter and discard broken appliances and pieces of furniture as these things invite negative energy. In Chinese, "dust" actually sounds like "old," so cleaning the house is symbolic of driving away the bad luck of the previous year. Clean the stove and the kitchen. A dirty kitchen could affect the health and wealth of its occupants.
- Replace dirty curtains, linens, bed sheets, and pillowcases with clean ones. If you are single, use pink bed sheet to attract love, and red if you are married, to bring positive energy and good luck.
- Repair dripping or leaky faucets.
- Bring the happy vibe to your home. You don’t need to spend on firecrackers to heighten the festival atmosphere. You could just play music to set the good mood or sing on the videoke, if you feel like it.
- Make sure the LPG tank, rice dispenser and the sugar and salt containers are full.
- Make sure there is no problem with your main door as this is the “mouth of the house.” A main door that’s broken or not fixed could lead to problems on the stomach, pancreas, liver, and ulcer.
- Roll kiat kiat fruits in your home. Start from the main door, towards each of the rooms, from the ground floor going up. This activity symbolizes good fortune entering your home
- Display 12 kinds of fruits to represent prosperity each month of the year. “Not 9, not 13,” Master Hanz clarifies. The fruits don’t necessarily have to be round.
- Light nine pieces of incense sticks to ward off bad luck.
3. Fill your wallet with money. Put coins in your pockets to attract love in your life and give ang pao to your children and grandchildren to wish them an auspicious year. Wear polka dots. Since they have the same shape as coins, these represent money or wealth.
4. For those who are still single: wear a new pair of underwear to attract love luck.
5. Pay off all your debts before Chinese New Year. This is symbolic of closing the books at the end of the year and starting the new one on a clean slate.
Starting the new year right means starting the year on a positive note. Reconcile and make amends with family members you have conflict with. Don’t harbor negative emotions.
And of course, set plans and goals for the new year. Doing this will not only give you direction, it will also help you identify what’s important to you and will help you stay motivated and accountable towards fulfilling it.
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