Editor’s note: Vanessa Hua is the author of the forthcoming novel “forgotten city,” and of “Deception and other possibilities” and “A river of stars.” She is a former columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and has written for numerous publications on Asia and the Diaspora. The opinions expressed here are his own. Read more notice on CNN.
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By tradition, during the Lunar New Year, you are supposed to kit yourself out in new clothes, from the inner layers to the outer layers. If they are an auspicious red, so much the better. You can never be too lucky.
But when you spin a multiple of 12 – 24, 36, 48, 60 and so on – the ritual continues: red underwear every day of this lunar calendar year.
When I first heard about this practice a few years ago, I dismissed it as nonsense. It also seemed extravagant to buy so many pairs of a bright color under bright clothes. My pragmatic Chinese immigrant parents, engineers and scientists, did not pass this tradition on to their children.
In the suburbs east of San Francisco, our family feasted on symbolic foods — like noodles for long life and a whole fish for abundance — and elders handed out shiny red envelopes filled with new crisp tickets. We cut our hair and cleaned the house, sweeping out the old and ushering in prosperity like millions around the world.
Adding another superstition seemed like a problem I could do without. But as I approach my fourth time around the wheel for “the year of the rabbit”, which rises on Sunday – in what is called “ben ming nian” or the threshold year – I have been reflecting on the milestones of those past intervals: puberty at 12, moving across the country for a job at 24, and giving birth to my twins at 36.
Famous bunnies include soccer phenom Lionel Messi, actress Kate Winslet and director Quentin Tarantino. Your sign is based on the date and year of your birth, with 12 lunar zodiac animals rotating in a cycle.
In what promises to be another year of uncertainty, transition and change – compounded by anxiety over a looming recession, a lingering pandemic and anti-Asian hatred – talismans take on greater urgency. Heaven and earth have been turned upside down, and so to protect my family, I want all the help I can get.
According to Google Trends, searches for “Chinese New Year red underwear” typically increase in the weeks leading up to the holidays. It is one of the most important celebrations in China, Vietnam (like Tết), South and North Korea (like Seollal), Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and throughout the Asian diaspora.
In time for the new year, a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is offering a wide selection of high-waisted red granny panties and boxer shorts adorned with gold lettering for luck and wealth. Shopee, an online retailer in Southeast Asia and Taiwan, sells boxers featuring a smiling rabbit, dressed in traditional robes and surrounded by gold bars.
The gods are so distracted by red that they forget to hit you, explained Chinese-American astrologer Alice Sparkly Kat.
The more I have studied the practice, the more I realize the extent of its popularity.
On Twitter, Enna Alouette, a virtual YouTuber, recently request advice for a parent born in the year of the rabbit.
Her fans enthusiastically recommended wearing red underwear, socks and string bracelets. “In my house, people have to wear red underwear all year round,” one wrote. Another added: “Not a big fan of red underwear. But my mother always insisted that I wear it.
Posts on Facebook, TikTok, Reddit and elsewhere on social media refer to this ritual across the diaspora.
In truth, if you choose a year in your life, you can surely find moments of grace and adversity. In the past few weeks, before the rabbit came out of its burrow, a dental crown came out of my mouth and thieves got away with the catalytic converter of my car, proof that an accident can happen at any time.
And yet, after a broken engagement at 24 and deep misfortune at 36, author Christine H. Lee has decided to wear a pair of red underwear every day in her 48th year, in 2021.
“Every day I put them on made me realize the sensitivity of that year; I hear it can be bad, but it can also provide a solution,” said Lee, the Korean American author of the memoir “Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember.” “Putting them on made me do a short meditation each day and made me feel empowered.”
Compared to the usual New Year’s resolutions – exercise more, eat healthier – I like it because it focuses on what I can control while acknowledging what I can’t.
Eastern and Western conceptions of the 12-year cycle — although both based on the length of Jupiter’s orbit around the sun — differ, Sparkly Kat said.
In the lunar zodiac, you exercise caution every twelve years. “It’s a disastrous year if you don’t control yourself and hide from power,” said the author of “Postcolonial Astrology: Reading the Planets Through Capital, Power, and Labor.”
In contrast, the “return of Jupiter” of Western astrology is a period of transition between the different stages of life. “A growth spurt feeling,” Sparkly Kat said. “You get bigger. It can be disorienting when you’re in the middle of it.
As a Chinese American, I have always adopted and adapted what resonates from the diaspora and my place of birth.
On the cusp of her 48th birthday, Joanne Kwong, president of the venerable Pearl River Mart in New York City, told me she feels more confident than ever, ready for whatever comes her way. Me too.
Even still, the fellow bunny plans to kit out red underwear – which his shop will sell in addition to red socks, belts, bracelets, earrings, nail polish and other holiday tchotchkes. .
“At this point in my life, I’m a little more superstitious,” said Kwong, who is Chinese-American. “It doesn’t hurt, and it’s nice to keep your culture. And the underwear thing is a fun and festive thing to do.
Many in Italy and Spain might agree: On December 31, believers don red underwear for luck and love in the coming year.
It pleases me to see that marking time and setting intentions with ritual transcends cultures and borders.
Logically, I know it doesn’t matter if I wear red or not, but we live in a time that often contradicts reason. For me — for now — this shared tradition is empowering, connecting me to the diaspora. (Although in some confusing technicality, you’re not supposed to buy the underwear yourself, so a friend and my husband provided me with various styles, in solids, stripes, and heart-shaped polka dots.)
My twin sons – who were also born under the sign of the Rabbit – will turn 12 this year. What they choose to take from their heritage is up to them. Together, we are on the same journey of cyclical change.
Very often, life rushes into the race to catch the school bus or the race to meet deadlines at work. Days become weeks, months, years and suddenly a dozen years pass. My newborns have turned into tweens and I’ve gone from not quite middle-aged to now much older.
With the Lunar New Year turning, I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on my past struggles and how I found a way out.
It’s a mindset we could all benefit from in 2023.
