Chinese Year of the Rooster Reawakens Sense of Self

As she snags a shrimp dumpling with a deft swoop and a click of her chopsticks, my mother tells me that the Year of the Rooster is not a bad year to have a child.

“Rooster children,” she explains in classic Chinese metaphor, “are diligent workers. Like the rooster, they get up with the sun.”

We are having Sunday brunch at one of Chinatown’s dim sum palaces and I suspect conversations like ours are happening all around us in this noisy, cackle-filled hall. Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rooster, year 4691 on the Chinese lunar calendar, begins Saturday. And many Chinese-Americans will return from throughout Southern California to L. A.’s Chinatown for New Year’s Day and again for the massive Golden Dragon Parade on Feb. 13.

But during the next four celebratory weeks, many of us will take holiday matters into our hands by setting off our own deafening bundles of firecrackers (to chase away the passing year’s ghosts), driving out en masse to Forest Lawn and Rose Hills (to bow three times to the graves of our ancestors buried there), and joining the throngs of families waiting outside sprawling dim sum houses like this one to eat.

Of course, there are plenty of American-born Chinese throughout Los Angeles whose observance of the Chinese holidays involves little more than ordering takeout from Chin Chin. But for me, a second-generation post-Chinatown kid who, until my first trip to Asia four months ago, had never set foot on Chinese soil, the festivities always remind me of who I am. For a few weeks I can forgo all ties to Western logic and indulge wholeheartedly in dogmatic Chinese traditions.

During the Year of the Sheep in 1991, China’s national birthrate dropped precipitously: “Nobody wants to bear a child during the Year of the Sheep,” my mother tells me. “Who wants their baby to be meek and passive with a long, bitter life?” The birthrate shot back up during the Year of the Monkey in 1992. My mother’s matter-of-fact explanation: “Monkeys are crafty, passionate and resilient.”

During this time of the year my family subscribes to a spectrum of mystifying cultural mandates:

* On New Year’s Eve, you must eat chicken--no ifs, ands or but-I-don’t-believe-in-eating flesh. The Chinese words for chicken and luck are almost identical phonetically, so eating chicken brings good fortune for the year.

* You must never sweep the house on New Year’s Eve; that would stir up the passing year’s ghosts.

* On New Year’s Day, you must wash your hair and put on a new set of clothes; as the year begins, you must leave the past behind.

When we were growing up, Chinese New Year’s Day was always the best day of the year. Children could eat as much as they wanted, run through the house screaming and still receive lai see --red envelopes filled with cold, hard American cash. In return, of course, you had to say nice things in Chinese to your elders like “Respectfully, hope you get rich,” or “Wish you new happiness.”

I remember bearing other holiday messages, too. To our tired-eyed grandparents and their wealthy old-lady cousins we would yell out this little rhyme: “Gong hay fat choy/Lai see dow loy,” which translates roughly, “Wishing you prosperity / Now give me some money.” Charming kids we were not.

Almost every year, my parents took us to the extravagant Chinatown parade, an explosive queue of dancing lions, high-kicking kung fu masters, Cantonese Opera singers and the Chinese Drum and Bugle Corp--all of which slithered through Chinatown like a boastful dragon through a Chinese sky.

One year, my mother dressed all six of us in matching red mandarin suits cut from silk and lined in rabbit fur. We watched the parade from the front row on Hill Street, each proudly holding a glowing red lantern. Other years, we watched from my grandfather’s home above his Hill Street general store, while a young Channel 2 reporter named Connie Chung covered the cacophony below.

Another year, I was part of the spectacle. As a Miss Chinatown princess, in long white gloves and a sequined gown, I waved my way down Broadway and back up Hill Street in a white convertible next to Mayor Tom Bradley. Seven years later, my younger brother still taunts me with photographs from that pageant, a humbling reminder that I went through a poignant mid-’80s big hair-white pumps phase.

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For my parents’ generation, the Chinese New Year carries a weightier significance; it is traditionally a time for measuring the growth of the family in this new homeland. My aunt likes to tell stories about the early years in America, when my father’s family could afford meat only once a year: a good luck chicken on Chinese New Year.

In following years, my grandfather prospered, ultimately reigning for 15 years as mayor of Chinatown. For two decades of Chinese new years, he brought a chicken not only to his family’s table, but to those of all our local clan members and friends. He held boisterous, 15-course banquets at grand restaurants where the white-jacketed waiters emerged from the kitchen in a synchronized line, carrying silver platters piled high with steaming-hot chickens.

Last year, the Year of the Monkey, marked my first attempt to forge my own New Year’s traditions. Together with another second-generation Chinese-American friend, I threw a home-cooked banquet for 40 Westside friends. The table in our Santa Monica apartment groaned under the weight of all the food: chicken in plum sauce, barbecued pork, long-life noodles, plum wine, and finally, a big pot of spaghetti Bolognese that we had to whip up once the Chinese food had been devoured.

We asked friends to come dressed in a festive red and with their favorite proverbs in hand. We then erected a “Great Wall of Wisdom” to showcase all of these treasured aphorisms, such as “Women hold up half the sky” (Mao Zedong), and “Don’t Argue with Reality” (David Viscott). Most profound, perhaps, was “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear” (Honda).

I’m not yet certain how I’ll welcome the Year of the Rooster. I’ll be the first in line, of course, for my mother’s buffet on New Year’s Eve, and I’ll certainly take part in the lai see tradition--although these days I’m more likely to be handing out red envelopes to my nieces and nephews than gathering booty from my dowager aunts.

I’ll wander Chinatown--past the wishing wells, down the alleyways, and into the squares--to pay respect to the elders who gather around the bronze statue of Sun Yat Sen.

I like being among these folks as they settle onto a bench warmed by the sun, laughing and talking with their cronies; or as they sit alone, quietly nodding to themselves, blinking thoughtfully. I always wondered what I would hear if they spoke their thoughts aloud. Memories of distant mountains? Dreams of a land where dragons huffed and puffed through the sky and warriors slew evil spirits with giant silver swords?

Sometimes I have those reveries, too.

My mother says that this Chinese New Year she’ll be right there on Hill Street to see her friends in the Chinese Historical Society of Los Angeles marching at the head of the big parade. “They’ll all be waving American flags,” she tells me.

And then it occurs to me: The mountains we all dream about every Chinese New Year may very well be the ones that surround our homes here in the Southland, looming benevolently in the middle distance, formed by the promise of golden lives.