What Would Jimmy Do?

Chinese New Year celebrations begin today (January 22) and end on February 5. It’s the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit and will last through February 9, 2024.

There’s no set date for Chinese New Year. Typically, Chinese New Year begins between late January and late February, timed to the new Moon. The holiday falls on different dates every year because it’s based on the ancient Chinese lunar calendar —that is  based on lunar phases, solstices and equinoxes. Chinese New Year typically lasts around 15 or 16 days because it begins with the new Moon that falls sometime between the end of January and the end of February, and ends on the following full Moon.

If you’re in China, you’ll hear Chinese New Year referred to as “chunjie” or the Spring Festival. The Spring Festival was originally a ceremonial day to pray to the gods for a good planting and harvest season. As an agrarian society, the harvest was everything, but people also prayed to their ancestors, because they were treated as gods….

The Chinese have many myths for any subject or occasion — one concerning the new year goes that once there was a monster named Nian that would come around every New Year’s Eve. Most people hid in their homes, but one boy was brave enough to fight him off using firecrackers. The next day, people celebrated their survival by setting off even more firecrackers — that practice became a crucial part of Chinese New Year.

Even today, firecrackers are supposed to scare off monsters and bad luck. So people stay up on Chinese New Year’s Eve and set off firecrackers at midnight. In the morning, firecrackers are used again to welcome the new year and good luck.

Something that is synonymous with Chinese New Year is red envelopes. In almost every culture, children receive gifts for the holidays, and gifts are exchanged during the Spring Festival, but on Chinese New Year day, Chinese children receive red envelopes, that are sometimes called red packets or pockets — they contain money. This money is supposed to help transfer fortune from the elders to the kids. These envelopes may also be given between bosses and employees, co-workers or friends. I just read that with the development of technology, digital red envelopes are the trend now…oh, well.

Technically, during the Spring Festival, you eat dumplings for every meal. Actually, not many people do that anymore, so most people eat dumplings during the New Year’s Eve dinner. Dumplings aren’t that popular everywhere in China —they’re preferred mostly in northern China. In southern China, people prefer springs rolls and balls of glutinous rice in a soup called tangyuan.

There’s a Chinese saying that there’s no manners and/or etiquette without wine. This means that you need to have wine for every ceremony, festival or important dinner — naturally wine is a big part of New Years festivities. But when you’re eating with someone older than you, as is the case with New Year’s dinners, you need to follow strict toasting etiquette rules. They include the order of the toasts, seating, how you hold the wine glass, etc. 

Chinese New Year is closely tied to religious practices and beliefs from Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism and various ancient folk religions, but today it is mostly celebrated as a secular holiday in China.

The new year greeting in Chinese is “xin nian kuai le” — the phrase literally means “Happy New Year.” In Mandarin Chinese, the phrase is “gong xi fa cai” that means “congratulation on the fortune.” 
So as we say goodbye to the Year of the Tiger and welcome the Year of the Rabbit, I wish you peace, love and prosperity. Gong xi fa kai!
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The subject of late seems to be the upcoming Chinese New Year. Everyone knows about the 12 Chinese zodiac animals….here’s what each of our family’s animal signs can expect for the next 12 months. 

According to the Chinese horoscope for 2023, the Year of the Rabbit, will be a good time for all the zodiac animal signs and an extremely lucky year for some of them… here’s ours.
Tigers (Me) — Tiger’s overall fortune is on the rise compared to 2022, and they are said to be “destined to be very comfortable in life and work.” Overall, Tiger’s horoscope is good, but there are going to be “some twists and turns in the process.” Tiger people are encouraged to learn useful lessons from failures, and be the calm in difficult situations to avoid strife.
Dogs (Claire) — Those born in the Chinese zodiac year of the Dog is set to experience more decline in health and wealth — so pay more attention to these areas over the next 12 months. In work and love, Dogs are advised to do their “own thing in a down-to-earth manner” so overall prospects gradually become smoother.

I mentioned that this year is the Year of the Rabbit, specifically the Water Rabbit. Water is one of the five elements….
The Five Elements Theory is a Chinese philosophy used to outline the relationships of everything in the universe between which interactions can occur. The five elements — wood, fire, earth, metal and water — are believed to be the fundamental elements of all these things.

The cycle of the five elements runs in a specific order and can be remembered by noting the different processes of creation and destruction that precede them.
The Five Elements Theory asserts that the world changes according to the five elements generating or overcoming relationships. Generating and overcoming are the complementary processes — the yin and yang — of The Five Elements Theory.
Generating processes promote development, while overcoming processes control development. By promoting and restraining, systems are harmonized and balance is maintained.

Every year is associated with an element. To figure out which element is associated with your birth year, look at the last number of your birth year. For example, 2023 is the water element, so those born in that year are Water Rabbits. 
Your year of birth determines your zodiac animal, and the last number of your year of birth determines your element. If the year of your birth ends in a 0 or 1, your element is metal, if it ends in a 2 or 3, your element is water, if your birth year ends in a 4 or 5, your element is wood, if it ends in 6 or 7, your element is fire and if you were born in a year that ends in an 8 or 9, your element is Earth.
But no matter what your zodiac sign or your element, this year the Chinese horoscope predicts you’re going to have a pretty good year….
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Chinese New Year is right around the corner, so as a public service, here’s what you should probably know about the celebration…..

The Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, marks the transition of the Chinese zodiac sign from one animal to the next. 2023 ushers in the Year of the Rabbit, which begins on January 22. In Chinese culture, the rabbit is a symbol of longevity, peace and prosperity. 2023 is predicted to be a year of hope.
Lunar New Year celebrations traditionally last for 16 days, from Lunar New Year’s Eve to the Lantern Festival. In China, the first seven days, from January 21 to 27 this year, are public holidays. 

Here’s a list of the days, and the way they are properly celebrated:
January 21 (New Year’s Eve) – The most important celebration includes the family reunion dinner, and staying up until midnight.
January 22 (New Year’s Day) – A day for visiting or greeting family and relatives, and giving presents.
January 23 (In-Laws-Day) – Married women visit their parents with their husbands and children.
January 24 (Day of the Rat) – An ominous day, so it’s common to stay at home, rest with family and play games.
January 25 (Day of the Sheep) – An auspicious day, for prayer and giving offerings, or going to temples or fortune-tellers. 
January 26 (Break Five) – Commonly accepted as the day when Taboos (from previous days) can be broken.
January 27 (Day of the Horse) – Believed to be the best day to get rid of old, unwanted things. Also an acceptable day to resume work.
January 28 (Day of Mankind) – Believed to be the day people were created. People are encouraged to spend it out in nature.
January 29 (Day of the Grain) – Good weather on this day will symbolize good crops for the year. Many families will have a second “mini” reunion dinner.
January 30 (Providence Health) – The Jade Emperor’s birthday, on which people give offerings, light incense and set off firecrackers.
January 31 (Stone Festival) – The birthday of the “god stone,” similar to the previous day’s rituals.
February 1 (Son-in-Law Day) – Fathers are expected to “entertain” or treat their sons-in-law on this day.
February 2, 3, 4 (Lantern Day Preparations) – Preparations for the Lantern Festival; cooking and making lanterns.
February 5 (Lantern Festival) – Marks the end of the festival. Lanterns are lit and hung or flown, dragon dances take place in the streets and children answer lantern riddles. 

So this is the way you celebrate Chinese New Year — when done properly. It makes our routine of going out for Chinese food rather unexcitable… maybe we’ll step it up this year.
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Here we are barely into the new year and a lot of people have said, “enough, already.” Of course I’m talking about those people that set themselves up for some major fails and disappointments.

The subject today, if you haven’t guessed, is New Year’s Resolutions. Invariably, most people (except me) make New Year’s Resolutions that are unreasonable and unrealistic.
(You can check the late December entries of this blog to see a list of my resolutions for 2023 that are completely reasonable and realistic.)

Anyhow, for all you other people — this day’s for you. It’s Ditch New Year’s Resolutions Day. The day that sets you free from your first mistake(s) of the new year.

Every year on December 31, around about eleven or eleven thirty, we all believe that the approaching year is going to be different — that we won’t go back to our old habits and things will change. It’s a shame, but every year those New Year’s Resolutions are about as effective as an ashtray on a motorcycle.

So how do people (not me) celebrate today? It’s pretty obvious — they ditch those New Year’s Resolutions. It’s a guilt-free day to scrap those resolutions and get back to normal. And even though most people (not me) no longer want to continue keeping their resolutions, at least they got this far. So they can let the world know they gave it their best shot, but their resolutions have been officially ditched.

Statistics say that, on average, only 8% of Americans succeed in completely sticking to their resolutions until the end of the year.
But some of us — the proud few, will be better than we were in 2022….
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Today, January 16, is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It’s observed every year on the third Monday of January. King, an influential civil rights leader, is remembered and his life and achievements are celebrated on this day.

The concept of a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a holiday was promoted by labor unions. After King’s death, U.S. Representative John Conyers and U.S. Senator Edward Brooke introduced a bill in Congress to make King’s birthday a national holiday. It first came to a vote in the House of Representatives in1979, but failed to pass. The two main arguments against the bill were that a paid holiday for federal employees would be too expensive and that a holiday to honor a private citizen would be contrary to longstanding tradition, as King never held public office.

The holiday finally made it through Congress during the Regan administration in 1983 and was observed for the first time on January 20, 1986. It’s observed on the third Monday of January rather than on Martin Luther King Jr.’s actual birthday because it follows the guidelines of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.

The civil rights leader was given the name Michael King Jr. at birth, but his father changed his own name as well as his son’s to Martin Luther — after the Protestant Reformation leader.
King skipped grades 9 and 12 and enrolled at Morehouse College at the age of 15.
During his lifetime he went to jail 29 times.

King’s tactics and manner of protest were mainly those of civil disobedience, including sit-ins, marches, and disregard for unjust laws. He helped organize rallies, gave speeches across the country, and mobilized thousands of people to help end racial injustice.

Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired millions of people in his lifetime and continues to inspire people today. Today should be more than just a day off, but a time to reflect on civil rights issues across the world.
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I got distracted and didn’t really “finish” the previous entry about fortune cookies, so welcome to part 2 of the fortune cookie saga….
I mentioned earlier that the fortune cookie traces back more to Japan than China, and some of my extensive research found that as far back as the 1870s, some confectionary shops near Kyoto, Japan sold a cracker with the same folded shape and a fortune tucked into the bend, instead of its hollow inside. It was called “tsujiura senbei” or “fortune cracker.” The Japanese cracker was larger and darker, made with sesame and miso instead of the vanilla and butter used to flavor fortune cookies in todays Chinese restaurants, at least those in America. Supposedly these crackers/cookies were still being sold at a generations-old family bakery near the Shinto shrine just outside of Kyoto in the late 1990s.

Some believe the fortune cookie likely arrived in the United States along with Japanese immigrants who came to Hawaii and California between the 1880s and early 1900s. (Most immigrated during that period as as result of the Chinese Exclusion Act that removed many Chinese workers and left a demand for cheap labor.) Japanese bakers set up shop in places such as Los Angles and San Francisco and made miso and sesame-flavored “fortune cookie” crackers, among other items.

I mentioned in part 1 the “trial” held in San Francisco to determine the true origin of the fortune cookie. Some of the legendary histories presented at the trial are interesting….

One story goes that the Chinese immigrant, David Jung, who founded the Hong Kong Noodle Company while living in Los Angeles, invented the cookie in 1918. Concerned about the poor people he saw wandering near his shop, he created the cookie and passed them out free on the streets. Each cookie contained a strip of paper with an inspirational Bible scripture on it, written for Jung by a presbyterian minister.

Another story claims a Japanese immigrant, Makoto Hagiwara, invented the fortune cookie in San Francisco. Hagiwara was a designer of the famous Japanese Tea Garden in Golden State Park. He was an avid gardener until an anti-Japanese mayor fired him from his job. Later, a new mayor did reinstate him. In 1914, to show his deep appreciation to friend who had stood by him during his time of hardship, Hagiwara made a cookie and placed a thank you note inside. After passing them out to those who had helped him, he began serving them regularly at the Japanese Tea Garden. In 1915, they were displayed at the Panama-Pacific Exhibition, at San Francisco’s world fair.

Another argument says that in the early 1900s a plan was hatched to transform San Francisco’s Chinatown from a ghetto into a cute tourist attraction. San Francisco’s Chinatown promised tourists a real Oriental experience. The city promoted their Chinese decorations, pageantry and architecture. Supposedly, increased tourism led to the invention of the fortune cookie to fill the void of a dessert item. A worker in San Francisco’s Kay Heong Noodle Factory invented a plain flat cookie. The plain flat cookie, while still warm, was folded around a little piece of paper on which a hand-written prediction or piece of Chinese wisdom would be found.

One of my favorite origin stories….During the 13th and 14th centuries, China was occupied by Mongols. The story goes that the Mongols had no taste for Lotus Nut Paste. So, the Chinese people hid sayings inscribed with the date of their revolution inside the Moon Cakes where the Yolk would typically reside. Under the disguise of a Taoist priest, Chu Yuan Chang, a patriotic revolutionary entered occupied walled cities to hand out Moon Cakes to other revolutionaries. These instructions coordinated the uprising that successfully allowed the Chinese people to form the basis of the Ming Dynasty. The Moon Festival became a regular celebration and part of that tradition was the passing out of cakes with saying inside them. 

One last argument to wind up this discussion is that the fortune cookie originated in Japan. A wood block image from 1878 shows what seems to be a Japanese street vendor selling fortune cookies. It is said that they can still be found in certain districts of Kyoto Japan, but are larger and darker than the fortune cookies we’re familiar with. They’re made with miso paste or sesame and have a savory flavor instead of the sweet, sugary fortune cookies available in the United States. The fortunes were never put inside the cookies — they were tucked into the fold of the fortune cookie on the outside. Many claim that this may be the earliest fortune cookie to appear in its now classic shape.

So it turns out that things like fortune cookies and takeout boxes aren’t related to Chinese culture, but if not invented here, were popularized in the United States. Wonton Food Inc., based in Queens, New York produces an estimated 4.5 million fortune cookies per day. In the early 1990s, Wonton tried to expand its business to China, but failed. Some Chinese were so unaware of the cookies and their purpose that they inadvertently ate the fortunes.

If all this doesn’t set the mood for Chinese New Year, I don’t know what will…..
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A couple of days ago, Claire brought home a box of fortune cookies — in preparation for our annual Chinese New Year celebration. I looked at the box and while just about everything we have in our house was made in China, the fortune cookies were not.

Well, since I don’t have anything better to do today and I know there is a lot of interest — and mis-information — surrounding fortune cookies, I thought that might be a good topic for today.

Often times when you go to a restaurant, when the check comes, the restaurants also give you a “treat,” like mints or maybe a small piece of chocolate. But in most Chinese restaurants — in the United States — you get a fortune cookie. Most people associate the fortune cookie with Chinese restaurants, and many/most believe they stem from Chinese culture. But — as you’ve probably already guessed, the fortune cookie is not a Chinese invention. Their origin can be traced back to 19th-century Japan and 20th-century America. 

As you might imagine with a controversial subject like fortune cookies, there are many theories and a lot of speculation surrounding its mysterious origin. Discussions about the cookie’s origin became so heated that in 1983 there was a mock trial held in San Francisco’s pseudo-legal Court of Historical Review to determine the origin(s) of the fortune cookie. There were at least five cases presented to prove the “origin” of the fortune cookie during the trial — but as far as I can tell, there was no clear winner.

One of the most often repeated origin stories of the American fortune cookie cites the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park as the first known U.S. restaurant to serve the cookies. The Tea Garden sourced their cookies from a local bakery called Benkyodo, which claims to have pioneered the vanilla and butter flavoring and to have invented a machine, sometime around 1911, to mass-produce the cookies. But several other sources have also claimed to invent the cookie around the same time — including three Los Angeles-based immigrant run businesses: Fugetsu-Do Confectionary in the city’s Little Tokyo, Japanese snack manufacturer Umeya and the Hong Kong Noodle Company.

By all accounts, it appears that fortune cookies probably originated in Japanese bakeries. So how did they make the move to Chinese restaurants? Again, no one knows for sure, but there are a few theories….

Japanese immigrants to the U.S. around the turn of the 20th couldn’t/didn’t open Japanese restaurants because Americans didn’t want to eat raw fish. So, in many cases, they actually opened Chinese restaurants. And Americans expectation for dessert at the end of meals may explain why many of those restaurants began to offer fortune cookies.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans, Japanese businesses began to close — including the bakeries that made fortune cookies. That opened the door for Chinese American entrepreneurs to produce and sell the cookies. 

So after World War II, fortune cookies became common in Chinese Restaurants. Some people like the taste of fortune cookies, some don’t, but just about everyone likes the fortunes. Some of the early fortunes featured Biblical sayings and quotes from Confucius, Aesop, Ben Franklin, etc. Later, fortunes included recommended lottery numbers, smiley faces, jokes and sage advice….
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Well here we are early into the new year and already faced with that unluckiest of days — Friday the 13th. This day is so bad that there are two terms — paraskavedekatriaphobia and friggatriskaidekaphobia — that describe fear of this unlucky day. The fear of Friday the 13th is officially called friggatriskaidekaphobia. Frigga refers to the Norse god for which Friday is named and triskaidekaphobia means fear of the number 13. An alternate term for the anxiety is paraskavedekatriaphobia. Originating from Greek, paraskevi means Friday, dekatria refers to “thirteen,” and phobia translates as “fear.”

Many people hold fast to the belief that Friday the 13th brings bad luck. My extensive research couldn’t come up with when this belief began, but “bad luck” superstitions have swirled around the number 13 for centuries.

Western cultures have historically associated the number 12 with completeness…. there are 12 days of Christmas, 12 months, 12 zodiac signs, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 tribes of Israel, etc. But the number 13 has a long history of “bad luck.”

One group of superstitious people use the fact that the ancient Code of Hammurabi omitted a 13th law from its list of legal rules as “proof” of 13’s negative association. (The Code of Hammurabi was one of the earliest and most complete written legal codes and was proclaimed by the Babylonian King Hammurabi, who reigned from 1792 to 1750 B.C.)

Some people point to the Bible, citing that 13 guests attended the Last Supper — the seating arrangement at the Last Supper is believed to have given rise to the longstanding Christian superstition that having 13 guests at a table was a bad omen.
The Bible even supposedly supports the association of Friday with bad luck — Jesus was crucified on a Friday, Friday is also said to be the day Eve gave Adam the apple and the day Cain killed his brother, Abel.

In the late 19th century, a New Yorker, Captain Williams Fowler sought to remove the stigma surrounding the number 13 — and particularly the unwritten rule about not having 13 guest at a dinner table — by founding an exclusive society called the Thirteen Club. The group dined regularly on the 13th day of the month in room 13 of the Knickerbocker Cottage. Before sitting down for a 13-course dinner, members would pass beneath a ladder and a banner reading “Morituri te Salutamus,” Latin for “Those of us who are about to die salute you.”

But do bad things actually happen on Friday the 13th? One famous story is that on Friday, October 13th, 1307, officers of King Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar, essentially wiping them out. Actually some knights were arrested on that date, but it had nothing to do with the superstition.

According to some estimates, the modern fear of Friday the 13th contributes to a routine loss of between $700 million and $900 million in revenue that would otherwise be gained on that day — all because most people don’t want to push their luck. You can fly cheaper on Friday the 13th, because most people don’t want to be in the air on that unlucky day. And stock prices tend to fall on Friday the 13th.
There will only be one more Friday the 13th this year…. in October.

So as far as I can tell, there’s no compelling evidence that anything historically bad ever actually occurred on a Friday the 13th that supports the superstition — there’s no need to fear the day, or to refrain from doing any of the normal things you’d otherwise do. But……
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The other day I heard the term “Ugly American.” Actually you don’t hear that phrase used so much anymore, but I remember throughout my younger life hearing it all the time. Having traveled over most of the world, I can certainly appreciate how it came to be and why it was, and is, used so often.

Years ago, several of us were Nicosia, Cyprus for a few weeks to install some equipment for the State Department. We stayed in a very nice hotel (I can’t remember the name) and it had very nice restaurant just off the lobby. We had breakfast there every morning and the staff became very familiar with our routine. We usually sat at the same table — a large round one off in one corner of the room. There were usually 4 to 6 of us that ate breakfast there every morning — the table could probably accommodate 8 or 9 people. 

The waiters knew that we all drank coffee, and after the first day or two, they just automatically poured everyone a cup coffee. After we’d been there a couple of weeks, we were joined by a fellow employee from Washington. He had brought a couple of things we needed to complete the installation, and he stayed a few days to help. He arrived one afternoon and I picked him up at the airport and checked him into the hotel. The next morning he came down for breakfast with us and the waiter poured everyone at the table a cup of coffee. The conversation around the table was mostly about what we hoped to accomplish the next couple of days. During the conversation, Ron (the new guy) waved to the waiter and and pointed to his coffee cup and said, “Arch-Harumph” (or something like that.) The waiter just looked at him with a puzzled look on his face. Then Rom pointed a little more vigorously and and spoke very loudly, “Aaarrgggghhh!” The waiter looked at me, and said, (in very good English) “What does he want? Another cup of coffee?”

Of course what made this even worse is that we were always briefed about each country we visited, so we wouldn’t be “ugly Americans.” The briefing about Cyprus was clear that the Cypriots had been very fluent in English for many years.
The world has changed a lot in the last 50 plus years, the ugly American — not so much…..
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A couple of days ago, we talked about Distaff Day — the day when women went back to work after the 12-day Christmas celebration. Well, men have their own way of celebrating the occasion of returning to work — called Plough Monday — the first Monday after Epiphany when men are supposed to get back to work. It didn’t happen this year, but every few years Distaff Day and Plough Monday fall on the same day.

Dating back to the fifteenth century, the first Monday after Epiphany marked the start of the agricultural season — when the fields were plowed for crops to be sown in the spring. But like Distaff Day, not much work was actually done on that first day. 

Basically, Plough Monday’s tradition is to trail a plough around local houses to collect money to pay for a community feast. Often the men from several farms joined together to pull the plough through all their villages. They sang and danced their way from village to village to the accompaniment of music. In the evening, each farmer provided a Plough Monday supper for his workers. 

Originally, if a person or household was unwilling to contribute to the “supper fund” then the ploughmen and ploughboys would turn their doorstep over with the plough or cut a deep furrow in front of their door. That practice has pretty much gone away today, but Plough Monday is still celebrated in some parts of England — I’m not sure it ever made it to the “colonies.” But you might want to look our your front door just to be sure….
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