2009 Lunar Calendar

Our 2009 lunar calendar's ready! The next year starts with the Year of the Bull(*) on January 26, 2009, but you may want to know what the moon will be doing all month. (The next zodiac cycle starts in 2020 with the Year of the Rat.)

Email me and request the pdf file for 2009's calendar. Online, I have a list of this year's lunar festivals, and just found "days until" countdown calendars for Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival.

(*) - or Ox or Cattle

2009 Lunar Festivals

China developed and used their lunisolar calendar to determine planting and harvesting times, and festival occasions. Although the western (Gregorian) calendar is used in China everyday, the lunar calendar is still important - especially for traditional holidays.

Chinese New Year (including the Lantern Festival on day 15), Mid-Autumn Festival and the Dragon Boat Festival are the most important and widely celebrated Chinese holidays. However there are quite a few other holidays celebrated by their lunar dates.

January 19, 2009 - Kitchen God Festival.
January 26, 2009 - Chinese New Year, lunar 1/1, Year of the Ox, 4707
February 1, 2009 - Common Man's birthday - This is celebrated more by Chinese in other parts of Asia, more than in China.
February 3, 2009 - Jade Emperor's Birthday
February 9, 2009 - Lantern Festival - lunar date 1/15 - This is also celebrated as a sort of Valentine's Day in some Chinese communities.

Tomb Sweeping Day April 4, 2009
(lunar 3/23) Tin Hau Festival - Taoist Goddess of the Sea and patron of fisherman. Celebration now is limited to smaller communities in fishing islands, or areas immediately around a Tin Hau temple. (There are about 60 temples in Hong Kong dedicated, at least partially, to Tin Hau.)

Buddha's Birthday (lunar 4/8) - This is now a public holiday in Hong Kong. In Cheung Chau, HK, the Cheung Chau Bun Festival is also held on this day, in honor of Pak Tai, the Taoist God of the Sea.

May 28, 2009 - Dragon Boat (Tuen Ng) Festival - lunar 5/5, Considered the third most important Chinese holiday

August 26, 2009 - "Valentine's Day" - "Night of Sevens" - 7/7 lunar
September 3, 2009 - Ghost Day - 7/15 lunar
October 3, 2009 - Mid-Autumn Festival - 8/15 lunar
October 26, 2007 - "Double Nine" Chong Yang Festival - 9/9 on the lunar calendar

Winter Solstice "Dong Zhi" Falls on December 20-22. It is December 21st in 2009.

The 27th year of this cycle begins:
February 7, 2010 - Kitchen God Festival
February 14, 2010 - Chinese New Year - lunar 1/1, Year of the Tiger, 4708

2008 Lunar Festivals

China developed and used their lunisolar calendar to determine planting and harvesting times, and festival occasions. Although the western (Gregorian) calendar is used in China everyday, the lunar calendar is still important - especially for traditional holidays.

Chinese New Year (including the Lantern Festival on day 15), Mid-Autumn Festival and the Dragon Boat Festival are the most important and widely celebrated Chinese holidays. However there are quite a few other holidays celebrated by their lunar dates.

The 25th year of this cycle began:
February 7, 2008 - Chinese New Year - lunar 1/1, Year of the Rat, 4706

Remaining big dates in 2008:

Winter Solstice "Dong Zhi" Falls on December 20-22. Probably December 21st in 2008.

When "off the shelf" isn't working:

Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people all remark
We have done it ourselves.

- Lao-tzu

Girl Scout Olympic Patch

Did you know that there were WAGGGS badges based on the Olympics? I think the Guides or Scouts were the first to do this, but this year there are some for the Beijing Games. I think the Girl Scouts in Taiwan created it.
Details at:
http://www.wagggsworld.org/en/projects/olympiabadge

Do the activities with your troop (or run a workshop!) and download and print our own certificates, or buy the patch, for about $1 each. (40 pence, but check the exchange rate & think about postage…) They ran out of the free cloth copies already. To purchase Olympia Badges, visit the WAGGS shop in the UK:
http://www.wagggs-shop.org/index.php/en/1/Badges_flags_and_pins/3

Olympics in China

The best children's resource I have found on the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics is this educational kit from the Olympic Museum:
http://multimedia.olympic.org/pdf/en_report_1283.pdf

Chinatown Foodtour with Martin Yan

OpenRoad.TV has an interesting video: "Wander San Francisco's Chinatown and work up a big appetite with famed chef and fabulous guide Martin Yan. Martin knows everyone and everyone knows him."

Book review: Liv and the Bird

Liv & the Bird: A Journey in Chinese Calligraphy, by Catherine Louis, calligraphy by Feng Xiao Min

I did not see this 2003 book when it was new. There may be no picture book on Chinese characters that I like, but this may be the best I've seen. I wished that the characters were also printed as I went through the story. . . then I got to the activities and I wished it even more! The activities have little do to with Chinese. I wonder if they were something that the editors required her to add afterwards.

I really think that it should be mentioned that only 3-4% of current Chinese script are ideographs/pictographs, if you include associative compounds (like that many trees make s forest) it might go up to 16%. I think in this context, it is at least as important as saying, "Pictures are at the root of all writing." Perhaps saying something like, "Each character is a picture and there is no alphabet.", would be better?

There may be no picture book on Chinese characters that I like. This may be the best I've seen -- but the activities have little do to with Chinese. I wonder if they were something that the editors required her to add afterwards.

• The 3rd activity "Make Up Your Own Symbols" makes the most sense to me.
• Suggesting that children create an alphabet by drawing "ant" for A and "bear" for B is a reasonable activity for the audience but has no relationship to Chinese.
• Pretending that the script/calligraphy could be copied and then that memorizing it would have significant worth is ... interesting. It would not necessarily help them recognize the way anyone else writes the character.
• "Flashlight Picture Magic" could be fun but I don't see the letter or Chinese tie-in. In fact, it might be confusing since paper the symbols are written on has to be taped up-side-down (writing toward the light) to be displayed properly -- and that is not mentioned. Even with English (roman characters), I can only think of 10 letters of the English alphabet that have left-right symmetry (AHIMOTUVWX ilovwx). It might not be as big as issue with 6 to 7 of the 29 characters given in the book.

No symmetry in Chinese characters
No Chinese characters flip symmetrically. None of the basic brush strokes that make up the characters are symmetrical. You are supposed to see where the brush is pressed and lifted from the paper.

With printed Chinese characters, instead of hand-written, then maybe a handful of characters have an access of symmetry. This depends on the font of course! Many of these are from the simpler characters and the same in traditional and simplified Chinese. If you must have some, check these in the font you are using:

yi 一(one)	er 二(two)	san 三(three)
shi 十ten	kou 口 (mouth)	ri 日 (sun, day)
mù 木 (tree, wood)	mu (eye)	音
zhong 中 (middle)	shan山 (mountain)	wei (outsider)
liu 六 (six)	liang (both)

In some fonts, even ren 人 (human), 來 lái (come), 圖 (picture), huang 黃 (yellow) and yang (sheep) might be symmetrical. However, please tell your audience that these are unique and not representative. These are how many - out of the 3,000 are needed to read a newspaper, and the over 85,o00 characters in the language?

Simplified Chinese may have a few more symmetrical characters, like: 士.

Chūnfēn 2008

Happy first day of spring.

Uniforms of Girl Scouts of Taiwan

Here are pictures of the official uniforms of Girl Scouts of Taiwan Brownies, Girl Scouts and Rangers. There is no date on them, but I believe they are current for 2008.

Many thanks to fellow Scout Leah for sharing these!

The green uniform is for Brownies, the Blue for Girl Scouts, and the white blouse and blue skirt (also on the catalog cover) are for Ranger Girl Scouts.

Hair & the moon?

I know that it is tradition not to cut one's hair in the first few days of the (Chinese) new Year, so as not to cut one's luck away. The year of the Rat starts on February 7th this year.

I have no idea what traditions went into Anthony Morrocco's Lunar Haircutting Charts that include a "best hair cutting days" schedule - where a "lengthening" cut is "good on February 8-10.

I'm a membership service

I am not sure if I should be proud or amused to have had my invitation to receive the 2008 lunar calendar included in a "membership service" email from the Chinese Language Teachers Association of Greater New York (CLTA-GNY).

I am glad to be able to help teachers & students of Mandarin, but I was surprised to have my invitation copied and redistributed without letting me know, or even asking if I minded. When I found out, some of the requests I had been getting made more sense. I expect another flurry of requests at the end of the month, closer to the Chinese New Year.

Readability Level

This is a bit of an ego boost. I wonder if it is merely because of the occasional Chinese characters?