Chinese new year sayings - in Chinese and Taiwanese language

Useful for newbie waigoren in Taiwan

My dragon lady in qipao, which she's wearing every day at home.

Spring festival is around the corner! Or that holiday, which is commonly known as Chinese new year. In Taiwan, Spring festival is highly anticipated, because it's the most important celebration and holiday of the year. It's also the time, where annual parties are held and annual bonuses are paid by the companies. And it's time of the year, when you realize that half of the people you know (or work with) are not Taipeiers, but Southerners. They all leave for the central or southern Taiwan to be with their families and relatives. If you want to see a real new year atmosphere, you better avoid Taipei: Compared to Singapore and Malaysia (read about my experience from 2009), Taipei is pretty boring. People work until the last day and have no time to be overly festive (at least that's what I saw around me). My wife said, that Chinese new year used to be celebrated with greater passion, but in recent years it's become less significant.

Here is some useful vocabulary related to Chinese new year:

春節
Romanized Chinese: Chūn jié.
Taiwanese prefer to say 新年 (sin ni) or new year.
Translation: Chinese new year
Litteral translation: Spring festival


返鄉
Romanized Chinese: Fǎn xiāng.
Translation: Return home for Chinese new year.
(In China they use chunyun 春運 and this is what happens).
Litteral translation: Return to village.


圍爐
Romanized Chinese: Wéi lú.
Romanized Taiwanese: Wi lo.
Translation: Reunion dinner.
Litteral translation: Gather around the stove.


去拜拜
Romanized Chinese: Qù bàibài.
Romanized Taiwanese: Khi baibai.
Translation: Go to temple.
Litteral translation: Go bow bow.

There are some temples in Taiwan, where it's believed, that if one places the first incense stick into the incense burner right after midnight, you will be very lucky that year. In the first video you can see, how crazy some people are about this, they fight to be the first one and even knock down the burner in the process. In the second video you can see a cunning ojisan, who outsmarted everybody. He pretended to be the temple staff and then placed the first incense stick right after midnight, when the huge crowd, that was waiting in front of the temple for hours, just started to run. My wife always cracks up, when she sees this.

These are the most common sayings around Chinese new year:

(祝你)新年快樂！
Romanized Chinese: (Zhù nǐ) xīn nián kuài lè.
Romanized Taiwanese: (Jiok li) sin ni khoai lok.
Translation: (I wish you) happy new year!
Litteral translation: (Wish you) new year happy!


恭喜發財！
Romanized Chinese: Gōng xǐ fā cái.
Romanized Taiwanese: Kiong hi huat tsai.
Translation: May you have a prosperous New Year!
Litteral translation: Congratulations on developing wealth!


龍年行大運！
Romanized Chinese: Lóng nián xíng dà yùn!
Romanized Taiwanese: Ling ni ghia dai wun.
Translation: May the Dragon year bring you a lot of luck.
Litteral translation: Dragon year grow big luck!


紅包
Romanized Chinese: hóngbāo
Romanized Taiwanese: angpao
Translation: Red envelope.

Giving red envelopes with money is an old Chinese tradition, which is also common in Taiwan. It's important to give a sum with even numbers. Avoid number 4, which is unlucky, and thousands with 3 zeroes (such as 2000, 6000 etc.) - preferred are 6 or 8. Unlike in Malaysia, where married couples always need to give red envelopes, in Taiwan the rule is, if you're working, you gotta give. It's also very important, to give a big angpau to your Taiwanese in-laws, a good sum would be 6600 NTD per parent and for those of you, who are very generous, 8800 NTD would definitely impress them.

Some popular new year songs to bring you in a festive mood:

This is a famous song called "Gong xi, gong xi!"

This is a performance from 1989, the song is called "Xin nian kuai le"

The same singer 20 years later re-enacting the popular song.

In the end I'd like to wish all my Taiwanese, Chinese, Malaysian and Singaporean readers a happy and prosperous new year. Thanks for reading and following my blog, I will try my best to write good posts in the year of dragon.

最後我要祝福所有來自台灣、中國、馬來西亞及新加坡的讀者們，有個快樂又富有的新年。謝謝你們閱讀及跟隨我的部落格，我會盡力在龍年寫出更多好文章。

[My UNIQUELY TAIWAN page][My LEARNING CHINESE page][Photos by MKL, 2012]