No Green Hats

Well we have graduated from learning numbers, just 1-10 mind you, to learning the primary colors in our Mandarin lessons. As with numbers the Chinese culture has beliefs about certain colors.

Let's start with the color red, we are seeing it everywhere in Singapore right now.  The entrance to the car park is framed with a red cloth, there are red lanterns, red tassels, red paper and the infamous red packets all very present during the Chinese New Year time.

Caleb's instructor told him that it was believed that on the Lunar New Years Eve a hungry ghost would arise and eat many people.  Those who had red around their doors lived another year because the ghost was afraid of red and would avoid those homes.

 Does this not sound extremely similar to the Pass Over of the Death Angle in Egypt.  The Israelites were told to paint their door posts with the red blood of the sacrificial lamb and the Angle of Death would pass over them and their sons would live.  Of course I am paraphrasing here but there is a striking resemblance in these two stories.

After doing some research on line we found that :

For Chinese, the color red is considered as a symbol of integrity. Ancient Chinese believe red color can exorcise ghosts and drive away misfortune. So red lanterns, red candles and other red decorations are common on formal occasions. People also write on red paper and then paste it on their doors to express their best wishes on every New Year's Eve. Until the early days of the last century, red is still widely used in Chinese wedding ceremonies. Above all, the colour red is part of the Chinese traditional culture.

It is tradition to give little red envelopes with some money in it for Chinese New Year to children and service workers.  Here are som of the envelopes for 2011, the year of the Rabbit.

Randi's instructor did not really know why red was so important but said that the color red indicates everything that is good, good feelings, good luck, good health etc...

 

We also have been told that it is considered lucky to receive mandarin oranges around the time of the Lunar New Year.  The instructor pointed out that the Mandarin word for orange is similar to the Mandarin word for lucky so they like oranges because they are lucky.  Now if you couple this with what we have learned about numbers we know that you should give 2 oranges because it is lucky but definitely not 4 oranges because 4 is considered a very unlucky number.

 

Now for the color green, there is nothing wrong with the color green and there is nothing lucky with the color green but you will never, never, never find a green hat in a Chinese store.  There is a saying in the Chinese culture that goes like this: "that man is wearing a green hat" the meaning of this phrase is "that man's wife is cheating on him".  It is good for our family to know this, coming from WI we could maybe give a Green Bay Packers hat to one of Scott's co-workers.  They would graciously accept the gift but they would never wear the hat.  By the way you can wear a green tie, green shirt, green socks etc... just NOT a green hat.