Chinese New Year - Renee Liang Photo: Supplied
Renee Liang Photo: Supplied
Around the world, Chinese New Year celebrations are well underway as we enter a new Year of the Dragon.
In Aotearoa, families celebrate the Lunar New Year in a variety of ways, says paediatrician, poet and playwright Renee Liang.
For her own family, Chinese New Year's Eve is the occasion for a special, lavish meal that's "a little bit like Christmas lunch" in that everyone is expected to turn up at the parental home.
"For me as an artist, it's a fabulous setup for all kinds of stuff to happen. But in reality, what happens is everyone just comes and we fight over who uses the stove and the ovens and everything because we all want to make our special dish."
For the occasion, Liang's "so-called Cantonese family" cook a range of different dishes that are supposed to bring good fortune.
"Whole fish and seafood are sort of the key dishes but so long as it's fancy food, it really doesn't matter."
Chinese New Year Feast - whole steamed fish, crayfish, pork dumplings, life-long noodles and chicken and clam soup Photo: Supplied
Her family also gift younger members hong bao - little red envelopes containing money sometimes known as "red packets".
"What will happen is that the kids will go round and they will beg as they will put their hands together and bow to the adults and then the adults will have to give them the red packets which contain money.
"The closer you are in relation to the child, the more money you have to give. So you actually have to give money to every child that comes up to you and does that. But say it's a child that's just you know, the child of a friend that you visiting, then that amount, maybe a smaller amount.
"So in our family, because we also have all the family birthdays at the start of the year … we're a hybrid. We also get red packets for Christmas and [Pakeha] New Year."
Chinese New Year - Renee Liang's cat Kimmy displeased she's dressed as a lion Photo: Supplied
Chinese New Year: Renee Liang's son at Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Temple modelling CNY wear. Photo: Supplied
In recent years, New Zealanders have become a lot more aware of Chinese New Year, Renee says, thanks in part to Auckland's "very beautiful and special" Lantern Festival.
For many Kiwis who aren't of Asian heritage, Renee guesses a visit to the festival for some tasty food may be their first or only interaction with Chinese culture.
Chinese New Year - Renee Liang Photo: Supplied
"But that's the gateway into understanding all the other stuff, and obviously for our communities, it's about identity and pride and connection and showing off the culture.
"Obviously we're very proud of our food and our art and our craft and then guess I hope that people would then dig deeper."
In the arts world, the last 20 years have been an exciting time to be "a creative with an Asian background", Renee says
"There's really been a flowering which has become almost an explosion now of different people from very different backgrounds ... cross fertilising and watching each other's work. Not only are there more stories to tell, but there's more people to tell their stories.
"There's just been this explosion of stories, which I just find so, so exciting and I'm still kind of in the middle of it, watching it all go on around me and kind of trying to spot the new talent that's hovering on the edges and trying to bring them in, so it's super, super exciting."
Renee is currently working on a new animated kids series called What Will I Be Today? Based on the audio series of the same name, the show will feature New Zealand-born characters who speak a range of languages including Cantonese and te re Māori.
"It's super, super exciting that we're allowed to write all these new things and that they're actually being asked for by programmers and by context-makers because it is now relevant to our population."
Listen to What Will I Be Today? (part of RNZ's Storytime collection).
