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The Year of the Ox
Woodbury celebrates the Chinese New Year in a multitude of ways.
BY AVA DIAZ
COMMEMORATING THE LUNAR ECLIPSE, the Chinese New Year is a two-week long celebration that begins with the new moon and lasts until the full moon arrives for the festival of lanterns. This holiday began when thousands of villagers defeated the mythical beast, Nian (“year”), that awoke the night before the New Year. Afraid of loud noises, bright lights and the color red, villagers used these things to chase the beast away. “Chinese New Year is the most important holiday in Chinese-speaking countries,” Mandarin Chinese teacher at Woodbury and East Ridge High Schools FangJu Lin says. “It is comparable to the significance of Christmas in Christian culture.”
Honoring the traditional Chinese calendar, this holiday focuses on ushering out the old year to bring forth good fortune and prosperity through the passage of time represented by the 12 zodiacs: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. Used to tell your fortune for the year, the sequence of the animals is representative of the order in which they arrived at the Jade Emperor (or Buddha’s) palace thousands of years ago. 2021 is the year of the ox, which represents the yin force of the Earth (one of five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water) within the 60-year lunar cycle. As the second zodiac sign in the series of 12, the ox signifies
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The ox, a valued animal in Chinese culture, is seen as hardworking and honest from its role in agriculture and its positive characteristics.
10 | FEBRUARY 2021
