VITA VISSUTA

On the eve of the Lunar New Year, cities across Asia seem to inhale and exhale in red.

In Beijing, red lanterns sway beneath overpasses. In Singapore, plastic bags of mandarin oranges pile high in wet markets. In Kuala Lumpur, glossy sheets of bak kwa — sweet barbecued pork pressed thin and lacquered like edible mahogany — hang in shop windows, catching the last light of the year. Red is not a color here; it is an atmosphere.

The holiday, known in Mandarin as Chunjie, the Spring Festival, is less a single night than a season of return. In China, it sets off the world’s largest annual human migration, as hundreds of millions board trains and planes to travel home. In cities like Shanghai or Guangzhou, the outward rush can feel apocalyptic — stations swelling with luggage, parents, children — yet the underlying logic is intimate. The year begins not with fireworks, but with reunion.

The reunion dinner is the axis around which everything turns. On New Year’s Eve, families gather around round tables — round, because circles promise continuity — and the dishes themselves carry coded meaning. Fish (yu) must be served whole and left partially uneaten, a culinary pun that signals abundance in the year ahead. Dumplings resemble ancient gold ingots. Long noodles are slurped carefully, uncut, to avoid symbolically shortening life.

Even in diaspora communities, from New York’s Chinatown to the suburbs of Sydney, these foods anchor memory. They are recipes, but also contracts with ancestors.

One of the most visible rituals is the exchange of red envelopes, or hongbao. Crisp banknotes are slipped into small scarlet packets embossed with gold characters — prosperity, longevity, happiness — and handed from elders to children, from employers to staff, from married couples to unmarried relatives. It is a gift, but also a gesture of transmission. Money here is not transactional; it is protective, a ward against bad luck.

“As a child, I remember holding my envelope not for its monetary value but for its weight. The paper was thick, almost ceremonial. Opening it too quickly felt like breaking a seal on something sacred. Years later, walking through a night market in Penang just before the holiday, I watched a grandmother press a red packet into a boy’s palm. He bowed slightly. The choreography was subtle, but it carried centuries”, told me a good friend in Singapore.

If the envelope represents fortune folded small, bak kwa represents indulgence made public. In Singapore and Malaysia, queues form outside specialty shops days before the New Year. The meat is sliced thin, marinated in soy sauce and sugar, grilled over charcoal, and brushed repeatedly until it gleams. Customers sample shards from communal trays, the air sticky with smoke and sweetness.

It is an unlikely emblem for a holiday rooted in agrarian rhythms, yet bak kwa tells a story of adaptation. It is Hokkien in origin, shaped by migration and commerce. Its popularity peaks at New Year because the holiday tolerates — even encourages — excess. After a year of restraint, sweetness is allowed to dominate.

But the celebration is not only about appetite. On the first days of the New Year, families visit temples to light incense and pray for clarity and health. Firecrackers — once literal bamboo exploding in flames to scare off the mythical beast Nian — now erupt in regulated bursts of spectacle. In Hong Kong, Victoria Harbour becomes a canvas of synchronized fireworks; in smaller towns, the sounds echo off concrete apartment blocks, startling birds into brief, chaotic flight.

There is also the ritual of cleaning. Homes are swept thoroughly before the New Year to expel lingering misfortune. Once the year begins, however, brooms are set aside. To sweep again would be to sweep away newly arrived luck. It is superstition, perhaps, but also a reminder that time can be partitioned, that renewal requires both action and restraint.

For someone who travels often — who is more accustomed to departure gates than dining tables — the holiday carries a quiet melancholy. In Bangkok’s Chinatown, I once stood beneath strings of lanterns and felt both included and peripheral. The red light washed over everyone equally, but the center of gravity lay elsewhere, behind closed doors where families toasted one another with small cups of tea.

Yet that is the paradox of Chinese New Year. It is deeply familial, yet expansively public. It binds villages in Fujian and financial districts in Singapore to the same lunar clock. It is ancient in symbolism, modern in execution — digital red envelopes now flash across smartphones, transferring luck with a swipe.

In the end, what persists is not the spectacle but the pattern. Red paper. Shared meals. The insistence on return.

A new year does not arrive quietly in this tradition. It is summoned — with noise, with sweetness, with the rustle of envelopes changing hands. And in that summoning lies a collective act of hope: that prosperity can be invited, that misfortune can be left behind, that the circle of the table will hold for another twelve months.

Under the lanterns, the world briefly feels reset — not erased, but recalibrated.

Photos: “Red” in Taipei, during my visit in early December 2025. Leica Q3 43