{"id":22,"date":"2008-02-06T00:01:58","date_gmt":"2008-02-06T05:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/madeleine.gillisonic.com\/?p=22"},"modified":"2008-02-07T22:34:08","modified_gmt":"2008-02-08T03:34:08","slug":"chinese-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madeleine.gillisonic.com\/?p=22","title":{"rendered":"Chinese New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/laurenceshan\/92142520\/\" title=\"Happy Chinese New Year 2006 on Flickr by Laurence Shan\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/madeleine.gillisonic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/2-06-08_chinesenewyear.jpg\" alt=\"2-6-08_ChineseNewYear\" align=\"right\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"3\" vspace=\"3\" \/><\/a>On the eve of Chinese New Year which happens to be tonight, family members of Chinese ancestry gather from all around to celebrate together at a HUGE reunion dinner.<\/p>\n<p>Akin to Thanksgiving in the United States or Canada, this dinner usually turns out to be quite an event, not only in food. The festivities sometimes includes 10 courses for dinner and the burning of firecrackers at the stroke of midnight (which is illegal in a lot of countries, but some have been able to sneak this in). Also, there will be the receiving (or giving if you&#8217;re married) of red packets filled with money which signifies good luck.<\/p>\n<p>This year is 4705, according to the lunar calendar, <!--more-->and the year of the Rat. More specifically, it&#8217;s the year of the Earth Rat. The Earth Rat year cycles every 60 years, meaning you will see it again in the year 2068.<\/p>\n<p>With my closest blood relative living across the pond, I will be dearly missing Chinese New Year, and being around my family members. As I&#8217;ve been told, my brothers have traveled south to be with my parents, to celebrate the new year with our extended family members. They will then head back on the next day, to have a smaller celebration with our own, much smaller family.<\/p>\n<p>The thing I will miss most is the food that is associated with Chinese New Year. Mr GC had asked me if I wanted to go out to celebrate the New Year  (which usually means eating), but I said no&#8230; because I&#8217;ve started on a new detox regiment and eating out will only make me have to start all over again. Boohoo!<\/p>\n<p>I guess that means I&#8217;ll have to celebrate Chinese New Year in about 2 weeks. I guess this is not much of a problem,  because the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chinese_New_Year\" title=\"Chinese New Year on Wikipedia\" target=\"_blank\">Chinese New Year festivities actually lasts for 15 days!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the eve of Chinese New Year which happens to be tonight, family members of Chinese ancestry gather from all around to celebrate together at a HUGE reunion dinner. Akin to Thanksgiving in the United States or Canada, this dinner usually turns out to be quite an event, not only in food. The festivities sometimes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[83,85,84,76,81,90,79,78,77,80,82],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","tag-83","tag-85","tag-84","tag-chinese-near-year","tag-dinner","tag-food","tag-gatering","tag-packet","tag-red","tag-reunion","tag-year-of-the-rat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madeleine.gillisonic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madeleine.gillisonic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madeleine.gillisonic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madeleine.gillisonic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madeleine.gillisonic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madeleine.gillisonic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madeleine.gillisonic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madeleine.gillisonic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madeleine.gillisonic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}