Allen Yu ---- Holiday

As Americans value Christmas as the most important holiday, the Chinese would nominate Chinese New Year as the most important holiday. As a tradition, every year, around February, my whole family would get together at Keelung, and have plenty of fun. As a Chinese tradition, it is important to wear red on New Years. First comes the classical BS card game, which is kind of a mind game, by trying to guess whether your opponent is lying or not. Each year, we play this game for days without tiring. Then comes the time for the world-famous Mahjong games. Because of the rule set by my grandfather, anyone part of our family can only play Mahjong during New Years, because it’s a kind of gambling. Although I usually lose a lot of money, it is still a great game. Since my grandfather believes in ancestry, we would take turn burning spiritual money for our ancestors, to wish them a happy new year, and to pray for our wishes to come true. After burning the spiritual money, we’d go eat a very huge dinner, which would include the classical New Year’s foods like sticky rice. We’d also be very careful to not touch the fish, because of an ancient Chinese proverb that connects fish to wealth. Nearing midnight, the grandchildren will recite a poem hung in my Grandfather’s room according to age, and receive red envelopes, which is basically money. After all that fun, our family would head home facing a new year.