Hong Kong Holidays in the eyes of Americans

As many of you know Hong Kong is the New York City of China, busy streets, the city never sleeps, small apartments and local culture you can never fully understand. I have been living in Hong Kong for a while, with little bit help of my own background some of local tradition seems logic to me but majority of it either have logic or no logic at all. I am in no anyway or form to criticize this society or culture. This is merely my own personal opinions. I hope you can find this entertaining, educational, cultural shock, or whatever you would like to take with my post. Now let's talk about the Chinese New Year in Hong Kong.


Lunar Chinese New Year

Yes the Chinese have their own calendar depend on the year; it is usually one or two month behind the international Calendar.

What it is for the Chinese:

This is the longest and the most important holidays (usually about five days) for the Chinese, also called spring festival. During the holidays most of business will be closed so people can go home spend time with the family and extended family members. On the first and second day of Chinese New Year, family will visit other extended family and wish each other good fortune in the coming year. During this time of year all the Chinese will spend money on buying material goods, red decoration for their homes, meat and vegetable to prepare the big fest, chocolate, especially Ferro Rocher here in Hong Kong because its wrapper looks gold so it is really giving “gold” to friends and family. The traditional lion dance will take place on first day of CNY to evict evil spirit that is accumulated from last year.
The RE
RE is the Red Envelopes, or red pocket (big difference than the hot packet). The RE always contains money, it can range from HKD 20 to 1000. Everyone will gives out Red Envelopes that has certain amount of money inside. Usually the elderly will give the Red Envelopes to children or grandchildren as sign of bring in good fortune and luck for the next coming year. But from my observation the age thing doesn’t really apply. Employer gives out RE to the employee, residents gives RE to maids and doorman, even friends within similar age group will give out RE to each other.

What Americans see about this holiday:

Better stock up food you will need during next five days because most of supermarkets either will be closed or only open during certain days. Good time to catch up some morning or late morning movies because the theater will be half empty. Less traffic during the rush hours, check out the lunar new year fair in victory park Causeway bay and flower market in Mong Kok (only first day of New Year, most of shops will be closed after). Get your haircut before Chinese New Year because it will be a bitch finds a salon that is open. Dinning out will be little more expensive during this time of year.

What do Americans see about the RE:

The whole RE is very confusing tradition. Should we give everyone we know RE? Toward the end it really will even out. In our situation, we get RE from our employer then we need to give our secretaries RE so we end up giving secretaries the RE we got from employer. We feel that we just laundry RE money to secretaries. Seriously cut off the middleman here, we don’t feel left out with not getting RE this year. You get some RE then you give out some RE, in the most of cases it will come out even, so in my dictionary I call it how Chinese Laundry the Money, of course legally.