Seeing Red

The Chinese New Year is fast approaching--this year it falls on Valentine's Day--and we are seeing signs of it everywhere. In the days leading up to New Year's people typically do a thorough spring cleaning to sweep away the bad luck of the previous year and make room for good luck to arrive. People often decorate the doors to their houses with red banners that have auspicious Chinese sayings on them, and they place the character fu, which means fortune, upside down in the center of the door. (That's because saying "fortune is upside down" in Chinese has a similar pronunciation to the phrase "fortune is coming.") It's also common to buy new clothes, especially Tang style jackets, and to get one's hair cut to symbolise a fresh start.

But what I think is hands-down the funniest tradition is buying red underwear. You can go to the supermarket in the month before the New Year and see one or two full aisles of red bras and underwear. (The color red is considered an auspicious color and symbolizes happiness, virtue, truth, and sincerity.) So in the spirit of enculturation, I picked some up for Benjamin and me the last time I went out. I felt really silly buying it, especially since I had to comb through the racks to find the largest sizes available. And what I found even funnier was that the models on nearly all of the packages were Westerners. Well, I asked Benjamin if he wanted to model his underwear for you, but he said no, so you will have to be satisfied with this picture of our brand-new auspicious red underwear in the boxes they came in.