ISOSU: China 2008: The year of the rat

By: ISOSU

Posted: 2/12/08

Chinese New Year is the most important festivity for the Chinese people. It is also called the Spring Festival or the Lunar New Year.

Every year is assigned an animal's name: the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, ram, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.

A Chinese legend says that these 12 animals had a race. The first year was named after the rat, the winner.

The other 11 years were named after the order in which the animals finished in the race.

The clever rat jumped onto the ox's back and over the ox's head to arrive first.

The Chinese believe a person born in the year of the rat share some of the same characteristics. They are optimistic, cheerful, easy to get along with, do not fall into low spirits no matter how hard the circumstances, tend to love money and will fight for their lives.

At the same time, they are sensitive like a rat and have good intuition and imagination, but they are not good at logically drawing their own conclusions. Viewed from appearances, people born in the year of the rat are reticent persons, but actually they are not.

Sometimes you may find a person born in the year of the rat to be critical, complaining and fault finding. But generally speaking, people born in the year of the rat are easy to get along with. You can find them in circles of close friends and they are usually very friendly. These people treasure their relationships with friends and relatives.

They connect their lives closely to those of others. This is because once they like somebody, they can't bear to leave them.

A woman born in the year of the rat is usually surprisingly frugal. She buys second-hand goods, splits one meal into several and cuts down on expenses.

Of course, if there is a real need for money, she will not be stingy. Sometimes, people born in the year of the rat live in groups.

They don't care if there is another mouth to feed. They will let friends or relatives live in their homes, but they can always find something for them to do.

They even let lazy-bones and beggars move in and they provide work for them to do in their houses. They enjoy hearing secrets, but can keep them.

They may use such information as a weapon and are not satisfied until they have achieved someone's destruction. They seek loopholes without feeling shame.

On Chinese New Year's Eve all family members enjoy a big, delicious meal. It is very important for the Chinese to be with their families on this occasion.

Fish is always part of the dinner because it represents abundance.

On New Year's Day all Chinese children wear new clothes with bright colors. Red is considered a lucky color. Parents and relatives give children the traditional New Year's gift called lucky money.

This money is put into bright red and gold envelopes and then put under their pillows. In the morning of the new year, the kids wake up to see the "lucky money," which expresses that oneself has become one year older.

Red is a traditional color for festivals, celebrations, weddings and birthdays.

The lion dancers are always part of the festivities. The lion has a big head and a long body made of cloth. The lion dance is accompanied by drums, cymbals and noisy firecrackers. According to ancient traditions, the great noise frightens away evil spirits.

The dragon is the most important figure of the Chinese New Year festivities and parades. The dragon is considered a lucky figure. A parade dragon can be 20 to 30 meters long! Sixty or more men move under a long cloth that represents the dragon's tail.

During the parade, children represent the animals of the Chinese calendar. There are also acrobats and musicians in beautiful costumes.

On the other hand, 2008 means a lot to all Chinese people because of the Olympic Games.

The 2008 Summer Olympics will be celebrated from Aug. 8 to Aug. 24 in Beijing, the capital of China.

The slogan for the 2008 Olympics is "One World, One Dream." It calls upon the whole world to join in the Olympic spirit and build a better future for humanity. Not only Chinese, but also lots of international celebrities hold high expectations for the 2008 Olympics. Former International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch has said the Beijing games will be "the best in Olympic history."

Chinese are excited and preparing for this event. I went to Beijing during the winter break, and surprisingly saw lots of taxi drivers listening to English while driving.

They told me, "we are the window of China, and [the] Olympics could be a chance for ourselves. You never know!"

They are absolutely right. The potential revenue from the 2008 Olympics is estimated to be 300,000,000,000 RMB ($41,727,519,300 USD).

Beijing is expecting 2,000,000 Chinese tourists and 500,000 foreign tourists during the summer Olympics. Hotels, restaurants, transportation and any industries that are even just a tiny bit related to Olympics are getting ready to count the money.

Here, I would like to wish every Chinese and everyone here at OSU and in Corvallis a Happy Rat Year. I wish your every dream comes true at the end of this year. Last but not least, I wish everyone a healthy new year!

Yiging Ma, a graduate student in business and Xinfeng Liu, an undergraduate in wood science and engineering are part of ISOSU. The opinions expressed in ISOSU's column, which appears every Tuesday, do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Barometer staff. Ma and Liu can be reached at forum@dailybarometer.com.