Chinese Association celebrates Spring Festival with…
The Chinese Association of Guyana, for the first time ever, yesterday held its Lighting of the Lantern Festival at the   Parade Ground in Middle Street in the city to usher in the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit. As part of the celebrations 400 lighted lanterns were released into the evening sky.
Like a constellation of starlike jewels, the lanterns rose into the stratosphere, brilliantly scintillating in the dark   pool of a Georgetown night sky, as the Chinese stamped their cultural lineage in the Guyanese fabric of nationality with a   magnificent display of luminous radiance reflecting gloriously in the eyes of the spectators in the Parade Ground.
As part of the Chinese New Year celebrations, also, the Chinese Embassy in Guyana, which is located on Mandela Avenue,   Georgetown, hosted a gala cultural celebration, starting off the “Year of the Rabbit”.
Every year, when winter is about to end and spring is coming; the Chinese always grandly celebrate the first festival in a   year – the Spring Festival or New Year of the Lunar Calendar. This festival contains a long history and rich cultural   connotations.
During the period of New Year, which is a traditional festival, Han Nationality, which makes up 92% of China’s population,   as well as most of the minor nationalities of China, hold various celebrations, which mostly feature sacrifice to god,   memorial sacrifices to ancestors, ridding the old and welcoming the new, embracing joy and receiving fortune and invocation   for a good year. The celebration is of varied forms.
For more than two thousand years, the splendid celebrations have prevailed in China. It affects the lives of Chinese all   over the world. At the end of the lunar year, people hurry home to be with their families and interesting New Year customs,   such as staying up for New Year, making Jiaozi, posting New Years couplets, making New Year visits, and many other   traditional things that have become common habits of all Chinese people.
Spring Festival is not just one day, but includes many activities in the first lunar month. For the Chinese, Spring   Festival celebration only comes to a rest after the 15th day of the first lunar month, when the Lantern Festival is spent.   In fact, people start preparing for Spring Festival celebrations from as early as the 23rd of the last lunar month of the   previous year. During this time, all families are busy with overall cleaning, making special purchases for the festival,   sticking paper cuts on windows, hanging New Year posters, writing  New Year couplets, cooking rice cakes and making all   sorts of foods, all in preparation to get rid of the old and welcome in the new. The night before New Years is called New   Year’s Eve, which is an especially important time for family gatherings. Family members sit around a table, enjoy a   sumptuous Hogmanay dinner, and then sit together to chat or play. Most of them stay up all night until next dawn, which is   called Shou Sui in Chinese (waiting for the New Year).
Traditions
Shou Sui means not to sleep on the last night of a year and to stay up all night to welcome a New Year. There is an   interesting story among common folks about the origin of this custom.
In time immemorial a fierce and strange beast lived in deep mountains and thick forest that Chinese people called Nian   (Chinese for a year). It had a ferocious appearance and a savage character eating everything form a snap bug to a human   being and changing its diet everyday. People got to know its cycle and realize that every 365 days it went into a human   community to eat them, and it usually appeared after sunset and would go back to the mountain or forest when the roosters   crowed dawn.
Counting the exact date of the Nians coming and indulgence, folks considered that night as a juncture of torture, and they   thought out many ways to get through the night. When the night came every family made dinner early, extinguished fire,   locked the door to all chicken and bull pens, sealed front and back doors of the house, and had Hogmanay dinner in the   house. Since people didn’t know what would happen after this dinner, it was especially sumptuous. Not only did every family   member have to dine around a table to show harmony and reunion, but before that dinner they had to pay respect to  ancestors  for their blessings to get them through the night. After dinner no one slept but huddled together and chatted to  gain  courage.
Jiaozi
When the clock strikes twelve midnight of New Years Eve, people will eat Jiaozi (Chinese dumpling). In ancient time   midnight was called Zi Shi and this was when the new year replaces the old. That’s how the name Jiaozi came into being. The   custom has been kept till now.
Ya Sui
Children especially like the Spring Festival because they can get money on New Year’s Eve, which is called Ya Sui money   (given to children by elders).  The money should be daintily put in a red paper bag and distributed to juniors by elders   after Hogmanay dinner, or after the clock striking twelve at midnight.
Bai Nian
Chinese for making New Year visit, Bai Nian is an important custom of Spring Festival and a way of ridding the old,   welcoming the new and expressing goodwill to each other. On one hand it is an activity for showing respect for the elders   and love for relatives and friends, and on the other hand it is an activity for communicating and deepening friendship. On   these visits people say something auspicious for happiness and health, wishing each other all the best in the New Year.
Tie Chunlian
Tie Chunlian means sticking New Years Couplets. The original form of New Years couplets called Tao Fu first appeared in the   Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BC) in the form of rectangular peach wood charms hanging at each side of a door. These special   charms are believed to suppress evil and repel vice.
Door Gods
To wish for the family’s longevity, peace and health, people in some places will keep the custom of a sticking door god. It   is said that with two gods stuck on the door, ghosts will be awed and turn away. For common people door gods are tokens of   righteousness and force.
Ancient people believe that people with ugly faces are possessed with magical powers and unnatural ability. They are just   and kind and defeating ghosts and demons is their responsibility.
Cracker Playing
Cracker playing is a favourite activity of children during Spring Festival. Legend has it that the setting off of crackers   can drive away goblins and expel demons, so every year on New Year’s Eve, the sound of exploding crackers last a long   while.
History
Commonly called Guo Nian, the Spring Festival is the beginning of the Lunar year, with a history that goes back over two   thousand years.
Chinese New Year customs flowered during the Pre-Qin Period. At the time people held celebrations after agricultural   affairs were finished as a sacrificial activity to thank the God’s bestowment.
Festive customs recorder in “July: The Book of Songs”  include the period of Western Zhou (1046-771 BC), when people   offered luscious wine and lamb to Gods as reward for their blessings and obligation during the past year and as invocation   for favourable weather and bumper harvest in the oncoming year. There was not a fixed date as different states used   different calendars, but it was around the time in winter when agriculture was not so busy.
New Year’s customs were finalized in the Han Dynasty. After the social tumult at the end of the warring states (475-221 BC)   and Qin Dynasty, government of Western Han (206 BC – ad 25) adopted “Rehabilitation” policies, which recovered and   developed the social production and restored social order. People became more hopeful about their life and so a series of   festivals and customs were formed.
The adoption of the Taichu Calendar stabilized calendar systems for a long time, so the first day of the first lunar month   as a first day of the year was settled.
As a result god worshipping, sacrificing and celebratory activities that used to be held at different times in late winter,   or early spring, were gradually unified to be held on the first day of the first lunar month.
Over time, New Year’s customs on the first day of the first lunar month became more interesting. People played fireworks,   developed spring festival couplets, drank tusu wine (an ancient wine of China), stayed up all night, enjoyed lanterns etc.   Spring Festival gradually developed into the most important festival in China.
Chinese New Years customs changed even more in the Tang Dynasty – a period of economic prosperity and political   flourishing, as well as frequent intermingling of Chinese and other cultures.
By and by New Year’s customs came out of the mystic atmosphere of invocation, superstition and evil prevention, into   entertaining and ceremonial celebrations.
For example, crackers on New Years Day were no longer a means of keeping away ghosts and preventing evil, but were ways of   joy and fun. Therefore it is safe to say that only after the Tang Dynasty has New Year become a “happy festival and   blessing day” for all.
In the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) the ceremonial and social function of the Chinese New Year increased. During the period of   the New Year, all kinds o recreation was carried  out – the lion dance, dragon dance, drama playing, story telling, stilt   walking, land boat racing etc.
Recreations at different places possessed their own characteristics and different entertainments kept coming on.  New Years   customs at the time fully absorbed Chinese traditional culture, becoming a becoming a folk custom exposition where Chinese   customs and traditions that had thousands of years of history were displayed in a centralized way.
On New Year’s Eve, families are still coming together and having Hogmanay dinner while watching brilliant Spring Festival   parties until early mornings of the first day of the first lunar month. In the heart of all descendants of the Chinese   nation, Spring Festival is always the most important.
History of Chinese in Guyana
In 1834, the slaves who had been taken from Africa to the colonies of Britain were set free. In British Guiana a   significant proportion of the freedmen chose to live off the fertile land and sought paid employment on an irregular basis.   The resulting reduction in the labour force caused the sugar plantation owners to search for replacement workers. They   obtained large numbers of labourers from Madeira (Portugal), India and China, with each bound by a contract of indenture.   The Chinese were the smallest group of these indentured workers.
The first batch of Chinese landed in Georgetown, British Guiana in 1853, and for the next few years all were men, most   being taken forcibly. To curb the excesses of this trade in human cargo the British and Chinese authorities in Canton   agreed to a formal supervised recruitment process and families were encouraged to emigrate. Chinese women began arriving in   1860, but in small numbers. The period from 1860 to 1866 saw a relatively large influx of immigrants, bringing the local   Chinese population to a peak of 10,022 in 1866. Subsequently, only two boats arrived with Chinese immigrants, one in 1874   and the other in 1879. After this Chinese immigrants came of their own free will and at their own expense.
The 39 ships that brought the Chinese labourers were chartered by recruiting agents based in Canton, China, with the cost   of shipping shared between the colony’s Immigration Fund and the plantation owners. The ships travelled by way of Singapore   and Cape Town, arriving at Georgetown after a journey of between 70 and 177 days.
The distribution of Chinese labourers to the sugar plantations in the three counties of Berbice, Demerara, and Essequebo   was made by the Immigration Agent-General, who based his decision on the quotas submitted by the plantation owners several   months previously. Families were kept together in the distribution.
Passenger lists were maintained by the Immigration Office in Georgetown and an ongoing search is in progress to locate   these and other relevant documents that give the names of the Chinese immigrants.
By 1900 the Chinese population in British Guiana had dwindled to 2,919, since the majority of Chinese at that time   preferred to marry people from their own country, but there were too few Chinese women available. Many also left the colony   to seek their destiny in other countries, particularly French Guiana, Suriname and Trinidad.