My collage takes different aspects of a traditional Chinese New Year and puts them all together in a way that shows the range of things that apply to the holiday. Everything on the board has a meaning and is used during the celebration of the New Year. My cultural encounter came when I first celebrated the holiday. My family is Chinese-American so when we first celebrated Chinese New Year, I learned many new traditions and customs about the holiday that I shared on the board.
The board itself is the backing of a calendar. The word fook (the red marking) means prosperity and can be seen all around during the New Year celebration. But with the way I arranged my collage, the word is actually upside-down. By hanging the sign upside down, it symbolizes that good fortune will fall into and stay here in the house.
Starting from the upper right corner, the red envelopes are called lai see and are given traditionally to unmarried children by married relatives, usually with money inside. Being married or single is the dividing line deciding if you get or give red envelopes. You give from the prosperity you have had in the past year and it will come back to you many times over in the New Year. Even among the Chinese, there are different customs for lai see giving. The first one displays a small Chinese zodiac, important for knowing what animal the year represents. The Chinese follow a lunar calendar so it does not match up exactly to the American calendar, but as of late January 2012, it is the year of the dragon. Each animal has its strengths and weaknesses and you are associated to those characteristics by the animal year you are born on. On February 10, 2013, it will be the year of the snake. The other zodiac is just a bigger version so that the viewer can clearly see al the animals.
We use the firecrackers and the noisemakers displayed on the board to scare off evil spirits. The tradition is that the loud sounds these items make drive away any bad spirits, which may cause us bad luck. The bars of gold on the top of the page show the wealth and good fortune that we hope for in the New Year. The incense on the board represents the tradition of paying respects to the ancestors. Traditional Chinese people have shrines in their homes and burn incense and light candles there. Others will visit the cemetery before Chinese New Year, burning incense and candles at the graves of their loved ones.
The foods displayed all have meaning to the Chinese as well. The noodles are supposed to be uncut, but I had to cut them to get them on the board. The length signifies longevity and long life. The whole chicken symbolizes togetherness and completeness and it must be served head, tail and all. The spring rolls represent gold since they look like gold bars. The scattered Swedish fish play a dual role in the collage. One, they are red, a lucky color for our culture. And two, it is a whole fish, symbolizes prosperity and surplus. The red “Now and Later” candies are just an example of they kind of things that would be in the traditional candy dish laid out for a “sweet” New Years. The picture of the oranges is there because people give each other oranges as gifts on the New Year for good luck.
Making the collage by hand, there are plusses and minuses to the form. The plusses are that you can see the vibrant red and gold colors that are traditional for the celebration. The elaborate textures and overlapping can be felt and seen close-up and the items seem to pop out at you. Another plus was that I could rearrange items any way that I wanted to, reducing the amount of background space that was left. Some of the minuses involve transporting my collage. It will be harder to bring it to class. It was also messier to make with hot glue and tape, even though I tried to use as little tape as possible. I think that making it by hand gave me more creativity, because I could display the whole project and visualize the final product in front of me. I could rearrange items in the slightest bit so that everything would end up exactly where I wanted it. Overlapping and bringing texture and vibrant colors out are also important to my collage. To accomplish that, a hand-made creation was better. I also felt that because I was physically interacting with all the pieces, the whole project was more intimate and I got a better sense of the meaning behind my cultural encounter.
