Tag: Year of the Snake

RED ENVELOPES

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The red envelopes will feature a great deal today in all Chinese communities all over the world.

Last Christmas, we gave out monies to children using the red envelopes.

RED ENVELOPES

What is the red envelope I can see you are wondering?!!!

Red Envelopes for Good Luck: Wealth and Prosperity

Red Envelopes for Good Luck: Wealth and Prosperity

They are envelopes which are red, LOL, and has embellishments and special wordings of good luck and good health.  Almost always monies are put inside of them.  But sometimes, they are used to give out gold chocolate coins too.

Anyway to maximise the “bountiful luck” ability of the red envelope, the amount given should be an even number.  Except of four,  the word for four sounds so much like death.  Eight is the very lucky one, eight is a lucky number in China.  Apparently the word for eight in Chinese is very similar to the word that pertains to wealth and prosper.  If you enclosed 88 dollars, pounds, or pence within the red envelope, so much the better because 88 could mean joy as well.  Next to the number 8, six is the preferred one.  Six can also mean wealth.  This is getting more expensive – a lucky envelope should have £886 ideally. 🙂

Anyway, when presenting your red envelopes, do it with both hands; it must be received with both hands as well.  It is a solemn occasion.

Gung Hei Fat Choi!!!

The Snake in the Rice Granary

Blogs Marag Superstitions

The Snake in the Rice Granary

Since the Chinese New Year is almost upon us, what better to celebrate it than to know about what lies ahead during the year of the snake.

Apparently, according to ancient Chinese wisdom, a snake in the house is a good thing.  It is an omen that your family will not starve.  It is certainly better than a snake in the grass! LOL

When we were kids and living in Marag, our house was a beautiful two-story building.  Downstairs on the left-side corner at the back of the house, next to the kitchen was a big room which my father built into some sort of granary, storage for our palay (palay is what you call a rice which is still unhusked.)

Whenever it needed to be emptied or more palay had to be stored, our workers would say that for sure a huge snake would be comfortably ensconced in the middle of the granary, making it a bit daunting to go inside.  Luckily no one had been bitten. Once or twice we would see a smallish snake crawling near our kitchen, it would be more frightened of us than us of him.

Probably there was some truth about the snake in the house because we never did starve even when there was a bad harvest due to droughts, typhoon/flooding or something else.