 |
| Organizers Raquell Yang, left, Cassie Wood, Doug Cleverley, Matthew Hayes and May Ip, right, meet at GB Arts to plan for Lunar New Years celebrations in Grey and Bruce counties. The piece on their table, featuring the Year of the Rabbit, will be resident at GB Arts for community participation and then donated to the Tom Thomson gallery. |
Lunar New Years celebrations are hopping along in Grey Bruce as the Year of the Tiger makes way for the Year of the Rabbit.
After a two-year pandemic pause the Grey Bruce Chinese Heritage and Culture Association is organizing events across the region from Meaford to Owen Sound to Dundalk.
Festivities begin with the public creation of a community art piece that will be donated to the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, and end at the conclusion of a four-venue arts exhibit in Owen Sound.
A highlight will be the celebrations at Grey Roots Museum featuring the Keppel Sarawak Choir, a photo booth with theatrical costumes from a Chinese opera company, do-it-yourself fortune telling using yarrow sticks and the I Ching – and the traditional New Years treats described to the Hub as "candied everything".
The Hub Community Incubator is pleased to host Matthew Hayes introducing the history and traditions of pu'er tea, made with fermented and aged green tea leaves.
Saturday, Jan. 21 – 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Owen Sound and North Grey Union Public Library
Festive and cultural activities
mid-January to Saturday, Jan. 28
Georgian Bay Centre for the Arts
Community art piece creation – please drop in and contribute!
Sunday, Jan. 22 to Saturday, Jan. 28
Tom Thomson Art Gallery
Festive art activities
Sunday, Jan. 22 to Sunday, Feb. 5
Southgate Ruth Hargrave Memorial Library, Dundalk
Festive and cultural activities
Wednesday, Jan. 25 to Saturday, Feb. 25
Georgian Bay Centre for the Arts
Grey Gallery
Owen Sound Artists' Co-op
Upwards Art Studio
Year of the Rabbit Art Show
Friday, Jan. 27 – 12:00 p.m.
Owen Sound Hub Community Incubator
Introduction to pu-er tea with Matthew Hayes
Saturday, Jan. 28 – 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Grey Roots Museum and Archives
Festive and cultural presentations and demonstrations
Sunday, Jan. 29 – 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Meaford Public Library
Festive craft-and-chat for adults
Lunar New Years celebrations start Sunday, Jan. 22, and end on Lunar New Year's Eve, February 9, 2024.
In China this time of year is often called the Spring Festival, but it's not only a Chinese national celebration. Other cultures, countries, and jurisdictions, such as Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as the Chinese diaspora around the globe, also celebrate the Lunar New Year.
In the common Gregorian calendar the first day of the Lunar New Year begins on the new moon that appears between January 21 and February 20; in the lunisolar Chinese calendar it usually falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice – or sometimes the third if a leap, or intercalary, month is necessary that year.
The first mention of these celebrations comes from about 2,000 years ago during the Han dynasty. The records describe ancestor veneration and wishes of good fortune to friends and colleagues.
A couple hundred years later revellers in the Jin dynasty started all-nighters on New Years Eve, followed over the centuries by new traditions such as sophisticated firecrackers, gifts of money in red envelopes, the writing of couplets using a proscribed method of rhymes and rhythms, and more recently travel and shopping.
In contemporary China, New Years celebrations were banned in 1967 during Mao Zedong's cultural revolution, and then reinstated in 1980, four years after Mao's death.
About two billion people – one quarter of the globe's population – will celebrate the Lunar New Year. In 2024, the Year of the Water Rabbit gets out of the way for the Year of the Wood Dragon.
- by Hub staff
David Galway
