Chinese welcome 'Year of the Rat'
Dominating the news this week was the bad weather in China.

China's government sent in the army to help millions of people stranded by snowstorms that have caused transport gridlock and crippled power supplies.

This is most unfortunate, barely a week before Chinese New Year.

More blizzards have been forecast ... bad news for the millions struggling to go home for the biggest day in the Chinese calender.

Central to the Chinese New Year celebrations is the Reunion Dinner - the Chinese equivalent of the Christmas lunch in Australia.

Coupled with high food and fuel prices, the bad weather has been an inauspicious start in China for the Year of the Rat.

The Chinese horoscope says those born in a rat year are blessed with a natural charm.

Rats are intelligent and materialistic but they will go to great lengths to protect their friends and to nurture family members.

The Rat family includes writers William Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte and Truman Capote, the composer Mozart, artists Claude Monet and Toulouse-Lautrec, and jazz singers Louis Armstrong and Sarah Vaughn.

Chinese New Year festivities last fifteen days.

In Malaysia and Singapore and some other parts of Asia, Chinese New Year is celebrated with "Open House," when friends decked in festive finery, visit each other to review the year over drinks and local delicacies.

The fifteenth day is most auspicious for single women.

On the night of the fifteenth, unmarried maidens will go to the nearest river to cast oranges into the water, in the hope of finding a match.

These days, they're more likely to meet a suitable boy by attending a 'Chap Goh Mei' dance ...

There may be no dance cards, but the chances of finding Mr Right are probably higher than gazing wistfully into a moonlit stream.

I remember the day, many moons ago, lunching with a friend at a neighbourhood coffee shop in the Melbourne suburb of Toorak.

The waiter was efficient and friendly, with striking features and luminous skin of deep ebony.

It turned out he was from East Timor, and was serving Italian lunches to supplement his income as fashion catwalk choreographer.

But imagine my surprise, when he spoke not only Chinese to me, but also Hakka, which is my family dialect.

I was greatly amused and touched by the incident - someone who not only spoke the dialect of my ancestors' home county, but one who could not have looked less Chinese.

There are an estimated 40-million Chinese living overseas.

Many may not speak a word of Mandarin, but are fluent in foreign languages... and most will be planning to celebrate Chinese New Year.

Favourite fare at this time of the year includes seafood such as 'yi sang' - a dish of thinly-sliced raw fish with shredded raw vegetables ... sometimes tossed in a light berry coulis - a dish richly symbolic of longevity and prosperity.

Then there's 'nian gao' a sticky sweet boiled pudding, which is thought to glue together the lips of the kitchen God so he does not report to Heaven, any domestic discord of the past year.

No discord where you are, dear listener.

May the Year of the Rat be one of harmony, good health and happiness.

Xin Nian Kwai Le!

Have a wonderful 2008!

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