As a child, I thought that birthdays were set in stone, so I’d always wonder why we would celebrate my grandmother’s birthdays on different days every year. Furthermore, I never knew why she would always give us hard-boiled eggs and insist that we eat noodles sometime around our birthday. I’d figured it was some sort of Chinese tradition and never bothered to look any further; however, during the past few days, I have done some research and discovered some interesting elements of traditional Chinese birthdays. For instance, some Chinese parents surround their child with a variety of objects on their first birthday; the idea is that the object the child reaches for is indicative of their future. For example, reaching for money might predict that the child will be wealthy in the future while reaching for an instrument might predict that the child will be musically talented; regardless, these are simply superstitions but quite fascinating ones nonetheless. Without further ado, here are three things to consider for Chinese birthdays:
Chinese Birthday Foods:
There are several different foods that Chinese people traditionally eat for birthdays, but two that stand out are hard-boiled eggs and longevity noodles.
- Hard-boiled eggs, sometimes dyed red, symbolize happiness
- Longevity noodles, which are often eaten during Chinese New Year as well, represent long life, as its name suggests.
Chinese Gifting Taboos:
What would a birthday celebration be without gifts? Well, let’s just say that some gifts are best avoided regarding traditional Chinese birthdays. Here are some examples:
- Watches or clocks, especially when given to older people, reminds them of their inevitable death. It’s kind of like saying “here’s a gift to tell how much time you have left on this world”
- Sharp objects make it appear that you are severing your relationship with the person.
- Green hats symbolize cheating on partners
- Shoes: The Chinese word for shoes (鞋 Xié) sounds similar to that of evil (邪 Xié), so gifting shoes is like sending the person evil spirits or misfortune.
Age and Birthday Calculations:
Because traditional Chinese culture makes use of the Lunar Calendar and counts ages slightly differently, people might be considered a year or two older in Chinese culture, and their birthdays may fall on different days on the Gregorian calendar every year. Nonetheless, the Chinese government currently uses the Gregorian calendar, so there’s no need to worry about being considered one or two years older than you actually are; however, if you have an older Chinese relative, they may still use the lunar calendar for birthdays.
- For most people, their age at birth starts at zero. However, for Chinese birthdays, babies are considered to be one year old at birth. Furthermore, an additional year may be added to a child’s age for their first Chinese New Year. Thus, some Chinese people might consider themselves one or two years older than they actually are.
- In Chinese culture, people actually have one birthday on the Lunar Calendar, but when you convert to the Gregorian calendar, that Chinese birthday might fall on a different day every year on the Gregorian Calendar. A little confusing right? Well, no need to worry.
- Here’s a handy calculator to find your Chinese birthday and your Chinese age: https://www.prokerala.com/general/calendar/chinese-age.php
- Here’s a Lunar to Gregorian calendar converter once you’ve determined your Chinese birthday, so you can keep up with your annually shifting Chinese birthdays: https://www.prokerala.com/general/calendar/chinese-year-converter.php
I hope you enjoyed learning some facts about Chinese birthdays!
Sources:
https://www.thoughtco.com/celebrating-chinese-birthdays-687448
https://www.discoverchina.com/article/how-are-birthdays-celebrated-in-china
https://www.prokerala.com/general/calendar/chinese-age.php
https://www.prokerala.com/general/calendar/chinese-year-converter.php
https://www.yoyochinese.com/blog/four-fun-chinese-traditions-learn-mandarin-chinese
https://www.kkdiscount.com/chinese-2021-daily-astrology-zodiac-wall-calendar/
this is interesting
Wow this is all really interesting! i didn’t know that some gifts symbolized things such as watches and death and shoes and evil spirits.
Its so intresting to learn about different cultures and tradtions. these tradtions seem to hold much value to many people.