The wonderful thing about living in multi-cultural Australia, working with clients and colleagues from around the world, participating in a global economy and having the internet at our fingertips is that we have such easy access to the different peoples and different cultures of every country and continent on Earth. Knowing, understanding and interacting with respect are the foundations of building and maintaining long lasting working and personal relationships.

This coming Saturday 10 February 2024 is Lunar New Year. A significant event that is celebrated by many people in Asia as well as their family, friends and colleagues all around the world. I thought I’d share some fun facts here with you that you could either share with those around you to strengthen your collective cultural awareness or use over the next month to engage with those who celebrate Lunar New Year.

‘LUNAR NEW YEAR’ NOT ‘CHINESE NEW YEAR’

Today, ‘Lunar New Year’ is the more preferred, culturally appropriate and inclusive term rather than the more historical framing of ‘Chinese New Year’. Learn which countries celebrate Lunar New Year and learn about some of the traditions that are carried out during this period from this audio clip / article by the SBS on What is Lunar New Year, and how is it celebrated in Australia?

2024 IS THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON

You typically won’t be able to have a conversation about Lunar New Year without a reference to the year’s zodiac animal being front and centre in that conversation. Whilst the line up of the animals are mostly the same across countries and cultures, there are a couple of differences between the Chinese Zodiac and the Vietnamese Zodiac: buffalo instead of ox and cat instead of rabbit. The personality nerds can read more about the traits of people from each zodiac in this article about the Vietnamese Zodiac.

There will undoubtedly be many of you reading this article and simultaneously be thinking that this zodiac stuff is mumbo jumbo or that it’s no better than the MBTI (Adam Grant’s 2013 article Say Goodbye to MBTI, the Fad That Won’t Die is a personal favourite of mine) because there’s no evidence behind the personality profiling; however know that there hard evidence of the long lasting impacts of decisions made by people in relation to the zodiac. Birth rates have traditionally soared in previous years of the dragon because it is perceived to be a particularly auspicious year for children to be born in and there are real economic, health, housing, infrastructure, education, migration, environmental and other consequences that fall from this (see Time Magazine’s post on The Year of the Dragon May Spur a Baby Boom in Asia article, The Economists’ data team’s explainer on Why Chinese children born in years of the dragon are more successful and the National Bureau of Economic Research’s digest Explaining the Good Fortune of Dragon Year Children.

THE DATE CHANGES EVERY YEAR

Day to day, most of us use the Gregorian calendar which has a fixed New Year’s Day (01 January) and a predictable New Year’s Eve (31 December) every year. However the date of Lunar New Year and Lunar New Year’s Eve changes every year and is guided by the Lunisolar calendar; based on exact astronomical observations of the Sun’s longitude and the Moon’s phases. Read about this and extend your knowledge of the above two fun facts with the National Geographic article Why Lunar New Year typically prompts the world’s largest annual migration.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Every language will have its own suite of Lunar New Year greetings from generic to specific depending on the person and their situation. I’ll end this post by using my ancestral tongue of Cantonese to say Gong Hei Fat Choy (yes you will see this spelt a heap of different ways when translated to English, just go with it) and share this YouTube video from Dope Chinese with Gloria on the 13 Essential Cantonese Greetings in Chinese New Year so that you can learn more greetings to use over the next month!