This is the Chinese word for “Spring,” by a master calligrapher who lived 600 years ago. The New Year’s celebration is also the Chinese Spring Festival.
Picture is courtesy of http://www.chinapage.com/newyear.html
January 26, 2009 is the start of China’s lunar year 4707. This year is the Year of the Ox. If you were born in 1937, 1949 (like Carl), 1961, 1973 or 1985, you were born under the sign of the Ox. According to their zodiac, people born under this sign are patient, yet once crossed, your temper shows.
In 1977 (a Year of the Snake), I was living in the East Bay area. We crossed the Bay Bridge and braved the crowds in San Francisco’s China Town. It was splendid and scary as firecrackers went off everywhere, even in the midst of the crowds, dragons pranced and roared, and fantasy floats rolled past. It was, however, also when I realized I had Enochlophobia, which is the fear of crowds. Now I celebrate it the way I celebrate most everything now: with friends at a restaurant with fine food and wine, and perhaps a bit of brandy or a gin & tonic . . .
Picture is courtesy of http://www.chinapage.com/newyear.html
January 26, 2009 is the start of China’s lunar year 4707. This year is the Year of the Ox. If you were born in 1937, 1949 (like Carl), 1961, 1973 or 1985, you were born under the sign of the Ox. According to their zodiac, people born under this sign are patient, yet once crossed, your temper shows.
In 1977 (a Year of the Snake), I was living in the East Bay area. We crossed the Bay Bridge and braved the crowds in San Francisco’s China Town. It was splendid and scary as firecrackers went off everywhere, even in the midst of the crowds, dragons pranced and roared, and fantasy floats rolled past. It was, however, also when I realized I had Enochlophobia, which is the fear of crowds. Now I celebrate it the way I celebrate most everything now: with friends at a restaurant with fine food and wine, and perhaps a bit of brandy or a gin & tonic . . .
2 comments:
Hello Erica,
And a happy Year of the Ox to you, too. I just stopped by to visit your page and say hello, after a long time away. I'm busy writing, and have finally given up on agents and decided to self-publish with iUniverse the novel that won me a self-publishing package at the San Francisco Writers Conference where we met. DO NOT TRUST THEIR EDITORS!!! My ms went to them and came back with editor's praise for selective passages (not especially distinguished ones, so I got a little suspicious) and a recommendation that I get special help with my punctuation (!!!), which, on closer inspection, had to do with the use of optional commas; quite irrelevant. The final insult came when the editor praised the novel as an adventure story that keeps one wondering how the family will handle the situation. Only trouble was, the book is not an adventure story, and there is no family in it. iUniverse was falling over itself with mea culpas. A new editor was assigned, and the evaluation was thoughtful and useful. But iUniverse does not use the same editors for the evaluation process and the content editing process, so I could not get the good one as a content editor. I went private for that, with good results, and should have a book ready for press sometime in the summer. (My real attention right now is on another book, coming in spring--a translation of a play by Uruguayan author Mario Benedetti, Pedro y el Capitan, Pedro and the Captain--a powerful dialogue between a torturer and his victim. I'll send you news of it when it's close to coming out.
Hope all is well with you, apart from the agoraphobia (the name by which I know the disorder; I know it's a hard one to deal with). Cognitive behavioral therapy has been very useful for some people, and might be a help if you haven't investigated it.
All best to you.
Adrianne Aron
P.S. I'm in the East Bay and will be crossing the bay to go to the parade this year, with son Johnny who is coming to town from Arizona just for that.
Happy New Year Erica. I learned that it was a bad omen to wear black on the Chinese New Year, but too late to change my wardrobe (I was wearing black). However, I hoped that my pink converse were enough to keep the bad luck at bay for the year! :)
Thanks for that interesting report on IUniverse, Adrianne. Good luck getting your book out.
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