VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
Is Chinese New Year just about fireworks and good food? In this episode of “Morning Coffee with Doug,” I’m diving deep into the Lunar New Year, but from a unique Western perspective. As someone from Canada living in Asia, I explore the fascinating differences between how we celebrate New Year’s in the West and the rich, complex traditions of the Spring Festival.
In this video, we tackle:
– Why it’s not just “Chinese” New Year: The difference between “Spring Festival,” “Lunar New Year,” and celebrations like Vietnam’s Tet.
– Calendars explained simply: Why does the date change every year? I break down the lunisolar calendar (with a helpful analogy for a 10-year-old!).
– 2026 is the Year of the FIRE HORSE: What makes this year so special and why it only comes around once every 60 years. We look at the traits of the Horse and how the “Fire” element amplifies the energy for everyone.
– The Meaning of the Traditions: From the monster Nian (and why we wear red and use firecrackers) to the symbolism of dumplings, fish, and oranges.
– An Outsider’s View: What it’s really like to experience the world’s largest human migration as a foreigner living in Asia, and how it compares to a Western holiday like Christmas.
Grab a coffee and join me for a long-form chat about one of the world’s most important holidays!
💬 I am FAR from an expert! I’m sure I made a few mistakes or missed some key details.
Please jump into the comments and:
– Correct me on anything I got wrong.
– Share your own traditions and stories.
– Add all the fascinating facts I missed!
If the comments section gets good, maybe I’ll do a follow-up video!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning and welcome back to Morning Coffee with Doug here in glamorous Planet Doug Studios aka my hotel room. And this morning I have Chinese New Year on my mind. And for obvious reasons, today is February 15th and I think Chinese New Year this year here in Malaysia falls on February 17th. That would be the first day of the new year. So yeah, Chinese New Year is upon us. I think this entire week is a holiday for Malaysia. A lot of people have the whole week off and then they’re going to be traveling around Malaysia. So hotels are full, roads are busy, people are heading home to spend the Chinese New Year holidays with their families, things like that. So yeah, the world is all about Chinese New Year right now. At least Planet Doug is all about Chinese New Year. So, over a cup of coffee, that’s what I’m going to talk about.
I’m going to be talking about Chinese New Year kind of from my own personal perspective of course and my own personal experiences and thoughts but also kind of trying to adopt the point of view of someone say from Canada, someone from the United States who really doesn’t know what Chinese New Year is all about. So, I’m going to be coming at it basic from the basics really. And when I start thinking about it from the point of view of someone in Canada, we always call it Chinese New Year, right? Because we have our own New Year. We have New Year’s Eve, December 31st, and then January 1st is New Year’s Day, and we just call it New Year’s. But then when we talk about the New Year celebration in China or in countries like Malaysia that have a large Chinese population, we call it Chinese New Year. But the first thing that jumps into my head is that even though we call it that in Canada or in the United States, they may not call it Chinese New Year in China, right? Like if we have a holiday like Christmas in Canada, we don’t call it Canadian Christmas. We just call it Christmas. So in China, I think the more common term is Spring Festival. Like when you translate the Chinese name for the holiday, for the celebration, it would translate into English as Spring Festival. Or with a more descriptive term, you can call it Lunar New Year. And that of course is because the western calendar, the Gregorian calendar is based on the solar year. And I’ll talk about that more in a minute. It’s based on the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, the Gregorian calendar. And then in China traditionally they’ve used a lunar calendar which is based on the movements the orbit of the moon around the earth. So things are divided up differently in terms of the calendar. So they call it the Lunar New Year. And when you come at it from that point of view you start to realize that it’s not only a Chinese celebration. You see versions of this in countries around the world that used the lunar calendar. They celebrate their new year and it coincides with the Chinese New Year but a lot of countries have their own versions of it. So for example in Vietnam most people I think have heard of Tet and Tet is their version of the Lunar New Year of the Spring Festival but in Vietnam they call it Tet and it falls at roughly the same time of year and has similar celebrations and is all about the beginning of the new year just as the Chinese New Year is. So that’s a very interesting way to look at it. Something else that jumps out at me about this holiday is like in China they call it the Spring Festival, but I don’t think of February as spring. I know in Canada they’re deep in probably one of the coldest months of winter. And in China as well, I believe it is still winter. So why is it the Spring Festival? I always wondered about that. And the idea is that yes, it’s technically taking place in the winter, but it’s looking ahead to the end of winter and the beginning of spring. And of course, when winter ends and spring begins, it’s the beginning of a new agricultural year where you start preparing the fields and then planting the crops. And then you go through spring, summer, and fall growing the crops, storing the food for the long winter ahead when you know the nights get longer, the days get shorter, it’s cold, and then you live through the winter. And then at Chinese New Year, the Spring Festival, that’s when it starts to shift. The days just start getting longer rather than shorter. The temperature from that point on is going to gradually get warmer. So, they’re looking ahead to springtime. The mental energy is switching from we’re locked in this long winter and now we’ve gotten through the worst of it and we can start looking ahead to spring, the new year, the new planting season, things like that. So that is why it’s called the Spring Festival. And I believe it’s also connected with the concepts of yin and yang. And I’m far from an expert in any of this, but in some of the reading I did, yin and yang showed up as well. That winter has yin energy. Sort of cold and sort of a lack of movement there. And then spring has yang energy where warmth and movement starts to emerge. So the Spring Festival, Chinese New Year, Tet is also associated with this transition from the winter into the warmer spring months and then growth starts to happen. We move from yin energy into a yang energy. So it has all of these elements kind of combined which I find quite fascinating. If you want to be very goofy about it and think of it from a Canadian or American point of view, you can think about Groundhog Day. Groundhog Day also always struck me as happening at the wrong time. The whole idea of Groundhog Day is that you’re predicting when spring is going to emerge. The groundhog emerges from hibernation, comes out of its burrow, and if it sees its shadow, it is scared and then goes back into its burrow. And there’s six more weeks of winter. And I don’t think I’ve ever come across a year where the groundhog didn’t see its shadow because when Groundhog Day arrives, it’s too early for spring. We’re still in the heart of winter, right? So you still have 6 weeks until spring and then the Chinese New Year, the Spring Festival also takes place about 6 weeks before spring actually gets underway. So you can think of it as that Chinese New Year as a much bigger, much more elaborate, much longer Groundhog Day celebration. Of course, that’s not a one-to-one comparison, but I find it fascinating that they both are about spring and yet we still have to wait 6 weeks until spring finally arrives. Again, as if I’m speaking to someone who knows nothing about Chinese New Year, someone from Canada, hearing about it for the very first time, they might think, well, it takes place on January 1st. It’s just New Year’s Day in China. But of course, it does not take place on January 1st. And that of course is because of what I already talked about that it is based on an entirely different calendar. As I said, in the West historically, we’ve used the Gregorian calendar. And the Gregorian calendar is based on the Earth orbiting the Sun. And one complete orbit is one year, which makes perfect sense. It’s very logical. And then we divided that year up into 365 days. But of course, the fascinating thing about calendars is that we’re imposing a human conception of time on a natural cycle. And it’s really hard to get the math to line up. So the best we could do and in terms of the history and the progress we ended up with the Gregorian calendar which has 365 days every day is 24 hours but that doesn’t really add up to one year. In fact we end up with 6 hours extra at the end of every year. So in fact a Gregorian calendar year is 365 and a quarter days. We end up with six hours that we can’t account for. So of course in the west we have the leap year which fixes that. So every four years we add one day to the calendar. So February instead of having 28 days we add one day and now it has 29 days. And what that does is it brings our calendar back into sync with the earth and the sun, you know, just lines it up, syncs it up because over time it drifts out of sync. It’s kind of like having a watch that doesn’t keep perfect time and every month or two you have to kind of notch it back by 2 minutes or forward just to line it up with real time. And it adds up perfectly when you think about it. Every year we have 6 hours extra. So 4 years go by. 4 * 6 it’s 24 hours. It’s almost a perfect day. And then we just add one day during the leap year. And now the calendar lines up with the earth and the sun. And then we’re good to go for another four years. And then we make an adjustment. So that in a nutshell is how the Gregorian solar calendar works. But Chinese New Year is not based on that calendar. It’s based on the orbit of the moon around the earth. And the Chinese calendar is fascinating because it’s not a pure lunar calendar. If it were strictly a lunar calendar, then the whole thing would drift and disconnect from the seasons. Because if you’re basing your calendar on the moon going around the Earth, that takes place approximately every 29.5 days. Right? So now if you’ve got 12 months at the end of the year, you don’t have 6 hours left over, you’ve got 11 days left over, right? That’s a lot of time for a calendar. And then if you don’t do anything about that, then over time the days start to go out of sync with the seasons. And now you will have your Spring Festival taking place in the middle of summer and then it’s going to be taking place in fall. And not to go on too big a tangent here, that is what happens with the Islamic holiday Ramadan. The month of Ramadan goes all the way around the solar calendar because it is based on a pure lunar calendar and it doesn’t make any adjustments. So Ramadan can happen in the summer, can happen in the winter, can happen in the fall or in the spring and it just moves around the seasons. But for the Chinese calendar, they chose a lunisolar calendar. It’s a combination. So the months are based on the orbit of the moon. So that is where the 12 months come from. But then they make an adjustment to bring it back in sync with the solar movements with the seasons. So what they do it’s the math of this is very complicated has a very long history has a huge vocabulary and it’s fascinating. If you want to do a deep dive into this it’s really interesting. I’m not going to do that deep a dive into it. I don’t think I even could. It’s too much for this poor brain to handle. But the basic idea is we in the west have a leap year for the Chinese lunisolar calendar. They add a leap month. So at the end of the year they have 11 days left over, right? So they just sort of set those aside and then they have a second year 11 days extra. Now we’ve got 22 days. And then a third year comes. Now we’re up to 33 days. And that’s when they make their adjustment. And it doesn’t always happen like every third year or sometimes it happens in a second year or a third year, but by the time you have 3 years passing, you’ve got about 30 days to play with. So what they did, well, let’s just make an extra month. So every, let’s say, every third year, the Chinese lunisolar calendar has 13 months. They just make an extra month. For the Gregorian calendar, we add an extra day and we call that the leap year. For the lunisolar calendar, they just stockpile all their extra days until they have a full month and then they create a special month. And I always thought this month would go at the end of the year, but as far as I understand it, it doesn’t. It actually goes early in the year. So, you’ve got the first lunar month. I don’t know the name of it, the second lunar month, and then they add a second month, like an additional second month, and then they continue on from there. So the whole year now consists of 13 months which is really kind of fascinating. So that’s how the lunisolar calendar works in general but it doesn’t line up perfectly with the solar calendar and that is why every year Chinese New Year takes place on different dates on the solar calendar. And again, I find this concept kind of interesting because everybody says, “Well, you know, that’s so confusing. Why don’t they have the holiday fall on the same day every year?” But now you’re looking at it from the wrong perspective. From the perspective of the Chinese lunisolar calendar, it does fall on the same day every year. Their calendar is worked out perfectly. It mathematically is constructed and it’s consistent and the holidays fall on the same month on the same day every year just like western holidays do. But when you try to convert it to the solar calendar then it’s a little bit out of sync because of those 11 days at the end of the year. So in fact, every year from a western perspective, Chinese New Year falls on a slightly different day. And we’re always doing Google searches like what day is Chinese New Year this year? But it’s important to realize that that’s only because you’re converting it. It’s almost like converting from one language to another. In terms of the Chinese calendar, it’s completely consistent. It always happens on the same day or the same month. But only when you try to convert it to another calendar, convert it to another language, then it suddenly is falling on different days. And yeah, I find that sort of thing quite fascinating. Super tangent alert. I spent about a year in Ethiopia, traveling around in Ethiopia. And Ethiopia has their own calendar, which is a fascinating one, where every year has 13 months, which really is kind of logical when you think about it. I was thinking about it this morning, that our calendar in the West, the Gregorian calendar, we have 12 months. And then the way we divide things up, some months have 30 days, 31 days, 28 days, then a leap year of 29 days. I mean, from the outside, you’re like, man, that’s pretty complicated. Why don’t you simplify it? And the Ethiopian approach historically was to simplify it where every month in the Ethiopian calendar has 30 days. Perfectly logical. 12 months of 30 days. And then at the end of the year they have a special 13th month which is five days long. And I mean I love that system because in the way with the Gregorian calendar emotionally we kind of do the same thing because for us we’ve got our 12 months 30 days 31 30 31 all that crazy stuff. But when we get to the end of the year, from Christmas to New Year’s day, that five or 6 day period, it’s like the whole world shuts down. That’s a holiday. Nobody goes to school, nobody goes to work. It’s like a period of time that is set aside from the normal calendar. Exactly. Right. So what the Ethiopians did very logically, it was like, well, let’s just make that a separate month because it really does exist outside of normal time mentally and emotionally for us in the West. Yeah. The year kind of ends on Christmas Day and then we have that five or six day holiday period. So that time between Christmas and New Year’s Day, that’s almost like a separate chunk of time. and we could easily think of that as a 13th month and make all of our other months 30 days and then everything would be more logical. So anyway, I find the concept of calendars and how they divide them up fascinating and all the ways we need to adjust them to keep them in sync with what is really setting time which is real time out there in the universe you know with the earth going around the sun things like that which is what sets the seasons which is the important thing for calendars. Anyway, I hope you found that tangent then super tangent kind of interesting. If you find any of that difficult to understand, I stumbled across this explanation on the internet that said, well, how to explain this to a 10-year-old? And I found it really fascinating because it made a lot of sense to me. So, like mentally, I have the intellectual capacity of a 10-year-old. So if you’re thinking of a calendar that marks time, you can also think of it as say an adult and a child walking side by side and the adult longer legs is taking longer steps. And the child trying to keep up, moving at the same speed, is taking smaller steps. And then every once in a while, just to get in sync, the child does a little bit of a hop skip to get back in sync with the adult. And then their steps slowly get out of sync again. And then the child does another little hop step to catch up again. Right? So that’s kind of what’s going on with these calendars. The adult is like real time moving along steadily and then we try to make a calendar to keep up with it, but we drift out of sync. And every once in a while we have to do a little bit of a time hop skip to catch up again and then get back in sync again. So I find that little analogy very helpful. And since we’re talking about time, one other big difference that someone in Canada might not even be aware of is that they are very different in terms of length. In the West, New Year’s is New Year’s Eve and then New Year’s Day. It’s basically a one-day celebration, a party at night and then the next day and that’s New Year’s for us. But the Spring Festival, the Lunar New Year, is much much longer. It depends on the country you’re talking about, but the traditional Chinese New Year, I think, is about 15 days long. So, it’s a much longer period of time than our New Year celebration and has a lot more elements built into it. And it starts with certain celebrations and ceremonies and then it has certain events during the 15 days and then ends with another big traditional celebration. So, it’s a much bigger scale that holiday, the Chinese New Year than the Western New Year. Another big aspect of Chinese New Year that a brand new person in Canada who’s never heard of this before might not be aware of is the idea that every year is based on an animal that is part of the Chinese zodiac. And to be honest, this is my favorite thing about Chinese New Year. The whole concept. I love the fact that every year is based on an animal and then every animal of course is associated with various traits and we of course we have something very similar to that in the west the zodiac but it’s very different of course because in the west that zodiac is based on months and depending on what day and what month you were born and the alignment of the stars on that day you are part of a certain zodiac like Aries, Sagittarius, Cancer, Leo, everybody is familiar with those and it’s based on the month and the date that you were born. But the Chinese zodiac is quite a bit different. I mean, even the word zodiac doesn’t really apply. That’s the English word for this concept. If you look at the, of course, China has a completely, they don’t call it the Chinese zodiac. They have their own name for it. And if you translate it into English, maybe the most direct translation might be like animal sign that every year has an animal sign. And there are 12 of them. And I have a list right here. These are the 12 animals. Rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. So there’s 12 of them. And then they cycle. So if you were born in the year of the rabbit, which I was, then the year of the rabbit comes up every 12 years. So, every 12th year is the year of the rabbit. And yeah, I just love this idea for some reason. And if you go to Buddhist temples, Chinese temples, of course, you’ll see statues of all of these animals all the time. And yeah, they’re fun and they’re fascinating and they’re interesting. And this year 2026 is the year of the horse. And before this morning, to be honest, I knew nothing about the characteristics of the horse, the year of the horse. And again that that’s also a fascinating aspect of the Chinese system where if you are born in 2026, you were born in the year of the horse and your personality is supposed to be energetic, independent, freedom-loving and impulsive maybe. So I found a chart that lists the positive traits and the negative traits of a person who was born in a year of the horse. So every 12 years it is the year of the horse and 2026 is one of them. And it looks like it’s a little bit of here’s the positive trait but if you go too far then it becomes a negative trait. So a positive trait for year of the horse people is energetic and optimistic. But if it’s too extreme, then they’re impatient and impulsive, right? So it’s good that they’re optimistic and energetic, but then they can also be because of their optimism, they don’t think things through and they’re just too impulsive. They’re also independent and freedom loving, but because of their independence, if they go too far with that, they can be stubborn. So, that’s another aspect of the horse people. Excellent communicators, like good leaders, but if that goes too far, they have a tendency to start a project and not finish them. So, they kind of dive in with both feet. Oh, let’s make this. they’re going to take over, become the leader, start this big project, and then they lose interest in it because they were too impulsive, and then they just abandon it. They’re clever and quick-witted, good, but if that goes too far, they can be hot-blooded and have a quick temper. That’s the negative side. They’re very popular among friends. So, it really, it sounds pretty good to be a horse. I’m telling you, I wish I was born in the year of the horse. All of that sounds pretty darn good to me. But if they’re popular among friends, they resist advice and constraints. So, I guess they’re very good in a social group, but then because they’re so independent, they start to fight back against the group. They don’t want to conform to what their friends want to do, right? So, they have that tension between independence and freedom loving and also being popular with lots of people. there’s a tension there. So yeah, I find that absolutely fascinating. The year of the horse. And of course you can go online and find out, you know, the famous people who were born in the year of the horse. I mean, personally, of course, I don’t put any stock in it. I don’t put any stock in the western zodiac either. The fact that you were born in July and that makes you this type of person. I mean, you can look at all the characteristics of that person who was a Cancer or Aries or whatever and you can pick and choose and you, oh yeah, that sounds like me, that sounds like me, and you can kind of convince yourself that it fits your personality, but you’re basically cherry-picking. You’re picking out the things and the things that don’t apply to you, you just kind of don’t pay attention to them. But anyway, it is very fun to play around with. But the fascinating thing about the Chinese system that I love is the year of the horse applies to the people who were born in that year, but it also applies to the whole year for everybody. So you might be thinking, “I wish I was born in the year of the horse because I want to be, you know, energetic and freedom loving and clever and quick-witted and have lots of friends.” But the year of the horse, this year 2026, basically calling it 2026, also has those characteristics for everybody. So for you, for everybody, 2026 it says is going to be a year of action, rapid movement, energy, like intense energy, a lot of social connections. And it says to me here that you really need some clarity. There’s all this energy and action in the air. It’s a year for getting things done. But in order to take advantage of the energy of the year of the horse, you have to have some clarity, set goals so that you channel all this energy and it just doesn’t go off in all directions and then nothing positive comes out of it. And if that weren’t enough, this year is the year of the Fire Horse. And I wasn’t aware of that. And this is another layer to the Chinese zodiac, which is really interesting. You’ve got the 12 animals, a 12-year cycle, but they also sync up with a 5-year cycle of elements, metal, water, wood, fire, and earth. And then when you combine those two, this year 2026 is the year of the Fire Horse. And because of that, it just sort of amps everything up times 10. All those amazing qualities are now amplified because this is the year of the Fire Horse. And that only comes around every 60 years. So it’s a very special year. I think the previous two years were 1906, 1966, and now 2026. And the next year of the Fire Horse isn’t going to come around until 2086. So, this is a very, very special year, the year of the Fire Horse. Winding that up, the year of the horse. It basically says that horses are natural leaders who thrive in social situations. So these people are drawn to careers like in politics, communication, journalism, performing arts, that sort of thing. So yeah, I mean I’m pretty excited now. I wasn’t earlier, but now the upcoming year, the year of the horse, I’m pretty excited about it now. Sounds like a pretty good year. And if you’re comparing the Western New Year with the Chinese New Year, man, the Chinese New Year comes out way ahead. All these ideas are just much more fun. In the West, of course, we New Year’s Eve, we have a big party, we count down to New Year’s, happy new year, you kiss somebody, and fireworks, and you have New Year’s resolutions. Everybody makes a list all the things they’re going to do better in the new year, but that does it seems very not a lot going on there to be honest. It’s a big party basically and this Chinese New Year just adds all of these elements that I find really interesting. Something else about the Chinese New Year that might come as a surprise to Canadians who aren’t familiar with this is that it has a heavy focus on family. The Western New Year, sure, there’s family involved. We go home for Christmas to be with our family. We tend to still be with them when New Year’s comes around, but we go out with our friends for a New Year’s party. But the Chinese New Year is much more about the family, people going home, spending time with their family. And in fact, so it’s well known now that at this time of year, the movement of people during Chinese New Year in China and around the world to go home to be with their family, it’s the largest annual human migration in the world. And I remember watching some fascinating documentaries about that in China and where they focused on the train stations, the traffic jams, the effort that people go through to go home for Chinese New Year. And it is, like I said, the biggest human migration in the world. People going home to be with their family. And I’ll talk about that a little bit towards the end as well. So the idea is to go home, spend time with your family, and of course, you have a big meal. In fact, you have lots of big meals. The big meals never seem to end. So the focus is on being with your family and eating lots of good food. And that kind of leads into another interesting aspect. Again, I don’t know all the details about this. I’m not an expert, but there is this ever-present pattern in China in the language where words sound like other words that have a different meaning. Right? You see that all the time in Chinese culture. So, Chinese New Year is about going home to your family, but it’s also about wealth and prosperity and good luck for the coming year. So everything you’re doing is designed to maximize wealth and prosperity and health and good luck for you and your family members. And for that reason, they focus on certain foods because the name of that food sounds like another word in Chinese. So for example, the Chinese word for dumplings sounds like the Chinese word for wealth. So, you eat a lot of dumplings because it sounds like money. It sounds like wealth. Fish are a big part of Chinese New Year meals because the Chinese word for fish sounds like the Chinese word for abundance. And I think the Chinese word for oranges, for mandarin oranges, that sounds like the Chinese word for luck. So, a lot of the foods that show up on the table for Chinese New Year, things that you see for sale in shops that everybody is buying and eating, it’s because the words for those foods sound like things like luck and good health and abundance and wealth, other words in the Chinese language. And I find that a fascinating aspect again of Chinese culture and the Chinese language. As far as I’m aware, we don’t really have that in English at all. There might be a rare couple of exceptions out there, but it’s just not a thing in English. I’m sure, yeah, we have words that sound the same, but we haven’t made that cultural connection. Maybe they just don’t line up naturally for us the way it does in Chinese. But yeah, that’s really interesting. And related to this idea that certain things have imbued meaning is the color red. For Chinese New Year, you will see red everywhere. And I kind of wore my red Canada shirt in honor of this video, though. Technically I really have only two shirts that I ever wear. I have a blue one and a red one. And I go back and forth between them. So, it’s a 50/50 shot what shirt I was going to put on when I went over to my hangers. But, of course, I was thinking, “Oh, Chinese New Year, I better wear the red shirt.” So, I put on my red shirt. And red is associated with wealth and prosperity and I believe even warding off evil. So, man, it’s a great color. It does everything really. So you’ll see red clothing on lots of people, red decorations. Yeah, red will be everywhere. And of course, the famous for me, people who have lived in Asia, the famous red envelope, the hongbao, I think it’s called. I’ll just call it the red envelope. And again, if you’re from Canada and you’ve never encountered these concepts before, this might be new to you. But yeah, the red envelope traditionally is a red envelope and you put money if you are a married adult you give red envelopes to children and to unmarried people to single people I believe and it is a gift of cash right and then children of course when Chinese New Year comes around they are excited they are beyond the moon excited get together, like these big family celebrations, and they get to meet all of their aunts and uncles travel in from outside of town. And of course, they’re hoping all those aunts and uncles are packing red envelopes. And then the kids can really make out like bandits. They’re just getting red envelopes from everybody. And it’s like, oo, how much money is in it? Which I find very fascinating part of Chinese culture. It’s a very fun one, which again, we don’t have in the West. Of course, we have Christmas presents. So there you go. But the whole concept of a red envelope is very cool. But of course you got to be careful. There are always traditions. I talked about how certain names certain words sound like other words. So there are numbers in Chinese that are either good luck or bad luck have various meanings. And of course, everyone knows that the number four is considered to be bad luck because it sounds I believe the word for four sounds like the Chinese word for death. Maybe even talking about it in this video. I’m not supposed to do that cuz I’m inviting bad luck. I don’t know. But the idea is if you’re going to give someone a child a red envelope, you have to make sure the amount of money you give them doesn’t have a four in it. So, you got to make sure the amount is right. And I think the bills are supposed to be brand new, clean, crisp bills again to make sure you’re increasing the amount of good luck, prosperity, and warding off evil that you’re handing over along with the red envelope. Yeah. So, that’s a very fun part of Chinese New Year as well. And if you talk to someone from Canada who might know a little bit and you ask them like, “What do you know about Chinese New Year?” The one thing they might know that they might say is firecrackers. Because during Chinese New Year, not just on New Year’s Day, just all the time, people are setting off firecrackers. It’s like a constant soundtrack to being anywhere in Asia during Chinese New Year. You just at night usually, but you hear the firecrackers going off all over the place. And I’ve been at temples. I think I have a couple of videos on my YouTube channel where I took video of this. It’s just astonishing. You’ve got you’ll have a temple with a wall going all the way around this huge temple going on for like hundreds of meters and they will string a firecracker string, a continuous one, the entire circumference of that temple and every few feet they stick in some big firecrackers like explosions. And then if you happen to be at a temple when they set that off it is really quite something. They light it at the beginning and then the firecrackers go off and follow that line for like a 100 meters or more and then every corner and a huge explosion goes off. It just is an incredible experience to be around when that happens. I remember trying to film I got very excited when I saw it one time. I was at a temple and I was like, “Oh, I’m going to film this for my YouTube channel.” So, I started I got out my GoPro and I’m following the entire line of firecrackers, but it went on for so long. I couldn’t even begin to put all of it in the video cuz it just goes on forever working its way. And by the time it’s done, you can’t even hear anymore. And then the sky, the whole temple is just covered in a cloud of smoke from the firecrackers going off. It’s really quite something. So, people know about Chinese New Year and firecrackers, but of course, there is a story that goes along with it that is also connected with the color red. And that is the story of the monster Nian. I’m never sure about the pronunciation of anything, but I think I can get away with calling this monster Nian. I mean it has a Chinese name with a Chinese pronunciation but in English Nian something like that might be close enough. So anyway this monster big monster with a huge horn big jaws a really scary creature. It can live deep in the ocean. It lives in the mountains and traditionally according to folklore this monster would come out of the ocean out down from the mountains once a year and then attack the village and eat people. So it was a terrifying monster and then every year the people in the villages would have to hide. This would happen on New Year’s Day on Chinese New Year. The monster comes out for a big feast and then people have to hide from Nian. And then one day a wise old man, the stories change a little bit, but the main story I always hear is that it’s a wise old man shows up in a village and a woman or a family there, gives him hospitality, stay with us. And then when the monster is about to emerge to attack the village, the wise man, he wears red clothing. He puts red paint on the door and he lights lanterns. And I believe he grabs like a pot and then just like banging the pot cuz he knows that these are the weaknesses of Nian, the monster. It’s afraid of bright lights. It’s afraid of loud noises. and it’s afraid of the color red. And the wise old man saved the village. So from that point on at Chinese New Year, everyone sets off firecrackers. So the noise, it’s a celebration. It’s meant to be a party atmosphere, a celebration, but it also has a purpose that it scares away Nian and other evil spirits. The color red also keeps the monster Nian away from the village and wards off evil spirits and light. So I think it’s a tradition to leave your lights on bright all night during, you know, Chinese New Year. Just have lots of lights on all the time. Maybe only on certain days. Experts out there will have to tell me, but I think that is also part of the tradition of Chinese New Year. firecrackers, color red, bright lights to scare away the monster Nian. And that is about it. That’s kind of everything I can think of off the top of my head about Chinese New Year and the year of the horse. But maybe I can end the video with maybe a few thoughts again along the theme of from a western perspective. And here I can add some personal elements about how does Chinese New Year feel to a foreigner like from the outside especially if you’re living in China living in Vietnam living in Malaysia and you’re here for the Spring Festival for Tet for these yeah the new year festivals around Asia and that is kind of interesting Because as I said, Chinese New Year and many of the holidays in Asian culture I find are very family-based. So the celebrations, the traditions, the gatherings, everything about it is about being with your family. Here I am on Planet Doug in Planet Doug Studios. So all the time that I’ve been in Asia, I don’t have a family. So the most of the holiday misses me entirely and I don’t really even see it or experience it unless I deliberately seek it out. So it does feel very different. I remember when I was living in Taiwan for a long time and every year Chinese New Year came around and then all of my co-workers, people living in Taiwan, they’re very excited because it’s a big deal to them. It’s a holiday. They get to go home, be with their family, good meals, all these traditions. But for a foreigner like me, it really wasn’t a positive thing at all because what it meant was everything shut down. I mean, everything was closed. So, all of my normal restaurants, coffee shops, places I go for entertainment, everything closes. And if I need to do anything, I always need to go to a government office, get a visa, get a permit, do this, do that. Can’t do any of that because everything shuts down. And I can’t go to work because the company closes for Chinese New Year. Hotels are fully booked out. Hotels are expensive. So for me as a foreigner, Chinese New Year, I kind of dreaded it. And a lot of foreigners that I knew, like English teachers or expats, they would deal with this by just flying out. They plan months in advance that, okay, at Chinese New Year, I can’t do anything, so why don’t I just fly to the Philippines and have a beach holiday and then I can come back when it’s all over. And I never did that because I’m not a beach holiday kind of guy. It would just be wasted on me. But also, of course, everybody else is traveling. I talked about how Chinese New Year is the biggest human migration in the world. So now you’re trying to fly at the same time that everybody else in the world is trying to fly. And yeah, that that’s not for me. And of course, the cost of the flight, the cost of the hotel, everything doubles or triples at Chinese New Year. So I never did that sort of thing. Thinking back, I probably should have because what I would end up doing is just staying in Taiwan and being in Taipei. You’re like, it’s like living in a ghost city. It’s empty. The streets cuz everybody’s gone home to their village to their small town. And Taipei is just an empty shell. It’s a ghost city. Nothing’s open. The streets are empty. There’s no activity at all. And yeah, and then you try to feed yourself and nothing is open. It’s just a weird time. So later on when I got a scooter, what I would do is just hop on the scooter and then you just go off on a week-long trip inside Taiwan and then that would work out pretty well. But even then, you’re fighting with the holiday traffic. Hotels are full, things like that. So it’s never a particularly great time for a foreigner. And even the celebratory aspects are so different because me as a foreigner, I could go out into Malaysia right now and I know it’s Chinese New Year, but I’m not going to see any evidence of it at all. Well, very little. I mean, you’ll see some in the stores. Like I said, you’ll see the color red. You’ll see special foods for sale, mandarin oranges, things like that. But I compare that say with a western holiday like Christmas. Even if you are single, living alone, and you don’t have a family, you still feel like you’re part of the celebration because everybody in Canada decorates everything outside for Christmas. So every time you go outside, walking up and down the streets, driving around the city, you see Christmas lights everywhere. And in a lot of towns, they even have people compete to see who can have the most beautifully decorated house. And then the city will put on tours and issue maps of where all the most beautiful houses are. And then you can go out at night and then go on a tour and see all the most beautifully decorated houses. There are Christmas trees outside, city hall, and shopping malls. all these places beautifully decorated with lights. Your the company where you work will have Christmas decorations around the office. People put up Christmas decorations at their desk even though you don’t have a family to exchange gifts with. Co-workers exchange gifts. They have secret Santa, so you’re involved in the gift-giving traditions of Christmas. Everywhere you go, you hear Christmas carols. The music changes. So even when you’re alone, you feel like you’re still part of the holiday. And that happens with Halloween as well. Everywhere you go, there’s Halloween stuff happening. Yeah. And then here in Asia, the biggest holiday of the year, Chinese New Year, I can look out my window right now and I can walk up and down the street. I’m not going to see anything unless I get invited into someone’s home and join their family for a Chinese New Year meal. Unless I go to a temple here, a big temple, when I know they’re going to have a big celebration and set off the fireworks, the holiday and the traditions and the celebrations are kind of hidden. They’re inside the home. They’re in amongst family members. And as an outsider, you’re not really pulled into it. It isn’t happening around you the way that say Christmas would in the west. And that is something that has struck me over the time that I’ve been living in Asia. Again, you know, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying good or bad. These are just different ways things happen in different countries.
I’m getting towards the end of my cup of coffee for morning coffee with Doug. And I think, as I said, I’ve gotten to the end of my thoughts about Chinese New Year. As always, I feel like I should apologize for making this video so long, but hey, it is what happens on Planet Doug. Videos are long. YouTube comments I write are long. emails you get from me are long. That’s just what happens on Planet Doug. So, yeah, I hope you enjoyed that. Thank you for hanging out with me as always, particularly over my morning coffee. Maybe I taught you something you didn’t know about Chinese New Year. More likely, I made like 10 mistakes. Feel free to dive into the comments. Correct me on everything I got wrong. Add more information. Things that I did not get to. I may have known but skipped over. A lot of things I don’t even know. You can fill in all the blanks for me. All the things I didn’t talk about, all the things I got wrong, all the things I don’t know, all the things I forgot. Put those in the comments. Who knows? Maybe I can do a Planet Doug replying to comments follow-up video to this one if people dive into those comments and just jam it with all kinds of interesting factoids. I would love it if that happened. I’m open to learning more about Chinese New Year and the year of the horse. I feel like we should all write a letter to ourselves and put it into some sort of a time capsule because, as I said, the year of the horse is supposed to be full of energy and action and change. And I wonder if it’s actually going to happen for everybody. So you can set some clear goals for the year, some hopes and dreams, what you think is going to happen in 2026, and then when we get around to next year, the new Chinese New Year. I don’t know what animal comes after the horse. I could look it up, but I won’t. And then you can open up the letter and see, well, how did things turn out? Was 2026 really an active, energetic year for a lot of changes and a lot of activities? We’ll have to find out a year from now. So, that’s it. Shutting down on Planet Doug and I’ll see you in the next video.