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Welcome! Gong Xi Fa Cai or Gong Hey Fat Choy – Happy New Year in Mandarin and Cantonese. Toni (Kanzensakura) tending the bar today for Poetics. Today, the Chinese New Year begins. In China, the New Year Celebration is not just one big party at midnight, the next day being a day for watching football and parades, sleeping in or maybe a special meal – it is a full tilt celebration of family, ancestors, tradition, and festival food. In China, it is the longest public holiday and the festival about 15 days. Most workers will have seven days off from work, students will take a month off from school. Family reunions, religious ceremonies, fireworks, “lion” dances in the streets, cleaning and decorating the graves of family members, special foods – just one big huge festival.
New Year Festive – Getty Images
Throughout the festival, there are scheduled events that take place all over China and with Chinese living in other countries: shopping for festival items, setting off firecrackers, eating new year dumplings, visiting relatives, Lantern Fair, guessing Lantern riddles, cleaning up the house thoroughly, writing and pasting up Spring Festival couplets, more setting off fireworks, married daughters returning home, welcoming the God of Wealth. As you can see, it truly is a month of regular celebrations and customs. They give gifts to each other such as fruit, chrysanthemums, tea, alcohol, and special red envelopes with lucky money inside for children, red, yellow and gold items that represent prosperity and good fortune. During this time, there will be much casting for fortunes/predictions in the new year.
A couple of new year customs: one should not wash clothes on the first two days of the new year for fear of offending the Water God. The rice barrel/jar should be filled before the new year as an empty or almost empty rice barrel/jar predicts poverty and want for the new year. Each year equates to an animal in the Chinese zodiac and rotate around every twelve years. This year is the Year of the Monkey. I am a rabbit. Several of the dVerse members include rat, rooster, dragon, rabbit. All have different traits. If you are interested to find out what Zodiac animal you are and the traits, you can do an internet search for Chinese Zodiac.
Let’s have some fun today in Poetics. Most of us do not believe in predicting fortunes or horoscopes but we almost always crack open those fortune cookies after a good Chinese meal. This is just for fun and does not represent any believe or disbelief in the beliefs of another country/culture. Fortune cookies are not Chinese, but they are fun.
copyright Kanzensakura
Today, I am presenting you all with some fortune strips – real ones pulled from random fortune cookies – not computer generated fortune strips. Choose one of the “fortunes” and use it to write a poem. You will need to quote the fortune at the beginning of the poem as you would any other quote you would use and let us know it is the “fortune” you have chosen for your inspiration. If you like, you can copy the photo and be sure to put “copyright Kanzensakura” with the photo credits. If you have a problem with the photo, just quote the fortune and choose an appropriate public domain photo of your choice. For extra fun, you can google recipes to make your own fortune cookies! The fortune strips are:
1. Your shoes will make you happy today.
2. A merry heart does good like a medicine.
3. Whenever possible keep it simple.
4. You are a lover of words
Now:
• Write a poem and post it to your site/blog.
• Enter a link to your poem and your name by clicking Mr Linky below.
• Link back to dVerse on your post.
• You will find links to other poets. Please read and comment on other poet’s work. This is how we get to know each other and enjoy this poetic community. If you post early, please be sure to check back and read later posting writers.
• If you are promoting your work on social media, use the tag #dversepoets.
• Have fun!!!
gōngzhù jiànkāng, xìngyùn, xīnnián kuàilè Good health, good luck and much happiness throughout the year
dVerse 
Happy new year, and happy Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras… what a fun prompt… basically so many good thing you can write on this..
Hello everyone! I hope you all are having a good day and that yoou will have fun with prompt!
A fun & imaginative prompt indeed. In prep for the writing, I used the fortune cookie message from another member’s poem. This really inspired me, but turns out my message was not verbatim for the ones you listed–which does not change the essence of what I created. But out of respect, I’m sorry to have strayed a bit afield.
My fault.
I hope this gets through. I am having massive computer issues. I will let your pom stay because it is lovely and I am so frustrated with this computer mess.
And this is why we need to read the post instead of another person’s poem. But I did mistype “mover” instead of “lover” so bad on me. I hope you did read the post though and learn a bit about Chinese New Year if you did’t already know. The fortune was correct in my poem and the email….Your shoes will make you happy today.
What a fun prompt, Toni!! Interesting fortunes indeed.
Kanzensakura/Toni/Hayes Spencer has mentioned to me that she is having computer issues and is having trouble getting to this page. Just wanted everyone to know.
Toni is having trouble with commenting here, and wanted me to let you all know that on her poem, in a comment to Glenn, she listed “mover of words” as one of the fortunes (instead of “lover of words” as listed in the prompt)…so you might find that a few of us have written to the wrong prompt.
For me your was close enough… (and I did a lot of misreadings before I bought new glasses… ).
I made up my own fortune, too, to meet the demands of where my poem took me…and just noticed that Glenn used it, too. I suspect you won’t fire me, though. Fun prompt.
Anyone having pancakes for Fat Tuesday…that’s how the French do it…at least when I lived there eons ago.
Here in Sweden we eat Semla:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semla
You can buy it everywhere… and I hope to eat a few later on as well (cheating).
Dang, that looks yummy and fattening, living up to the “Fat Tuesday” moniker. Should hold you for 40 days.
Not Shrove Tuesday pancakes but had Peking duck….so I kinda sorta had pancakes. Will make pancakes for our dinner tonight! What fun.
Hello. My computer comes and goes. I just cleared about 80 popups so will comment on as many as I can before being knocked off. Sorry about this. I hope you all have fun with the four fortunes listed in the prompt.
Ouch.. when those popups comes… I recall when I had problems with that…
I thinkay have temporarily quashed them…maybe
I like your choices of cookie messages ^_^. Number 2 is from the Bible. Very cool.
Good luck with your computer trouble!
Thank you. For a few moments, I have computer! Yes, that one is from Proverbs I think? I had 5 cookies and these were the fortunes. I threw away #5…Engjoy good health. Eat lots of Chinese food. I liked these random slips and the cookies were good too. I make my own sometimes when I have special meals. I love the things.
I have a box of them in the cupboard for when we make homemade Chinese food. We have a family dinner tonight. Maybe I’ll put them on the table before they get too old 🙂
🙂
My puter is not being good again, not letting me go to other websites to read and comment. If I can later, I will.
I need my sleep… To early this morning.
See you tomorrow Bjorn ~
Hey everyone,
Gong Xi Fa Cai 😀 hope you’re having a wonderful week so far, sharing my poem “Lover of Words” hope you all like it.
Lots of love,
Sanaa
Sorry dear folk. I thought I was good to go but now my puter won’t let me go to other websites to comment. I give up.
Happy New Chinese Year to all ~ My post is up & I am hitting the poetry trail in a bit ~ Happy Poetics everyone ~
Toni, I absolutely LOVE knowing all of this new info about Chinese New Year. Thank you! I shall be writing about shoes. 😉 That one cracks me up.
Thank you, for the prompt and the informative post! I will catch-up reading tomorrow, too!
I got inspired while doing laundry to write one using the correct prompt! Thanks, Toni.
Happy Chinese New Year and happy Poetics to all! What a fun prompt…I went a little silly with mine. Thank you, Toni!
Silly should go with the Monkey, no?
Exactly right, Victoria!
I can never resist a pair of shoes, so I think I will have to take part in the prompt today, allowing myself to be silly…
Happy Chinese New Year – should be a fun one! I am a monkey and Fire Monkey is supposed to bring interesting events – the last one was in 1968!
Looking forward to reading it.
Nope, got that wrong, the last Fire Monkey was in 1956 – still a very interesting and tumultuous year!
新年快乐 What a wonderful prompt and explanation of the Chinese New Year. Thank you, Toni! I’m a bit late to the party here — but that is okay since this celebration lasts at least a week! 🙂 During my solo travels as director of a Global MBA, I had the privilege of being in China in the midst of this wonderful holiday….and being in Singapore a week before this holiday. What I most remember is the colors of red and yellow, the red envelopes, the lanterns, and thinking what a wonderful celebration of family. I’ve always admired the Chinese culture for its respect toward the elderly — some would say veneration. And this time of year, there is a sense of community — of family. Quite different from our American one night of raucous behavior, watching the giant ball drop in NY City or on television, and then watching football the next day in front of a television with snacks. As someone once taught me, one is not better or worse — they are just different. Thank you, Toni, for bringing your culture to us here. Much appreciated! I’m still thinking on which fortune cookie to indulge in 🙂
Happy Chinese New Year, everyone!
lillian one more time — have been enjoying researching China — going back over old photos and did look myself up in the Chinese Zodiac. I was born in the year of the Fire Pig! 🙂 Thank you again, Toni — for this wonderful prompt. I’ve enjoyed my morning reading about China!
The fire pig….yum, a luau!
Tumultuous monkeys indeed! I kind of live with them. Tony, thanks for a lovely prompt – a fun one. May The Year of the Monkey have as few upheavals as possible for everyone.
please note: A Dash of Sunny, everydayamazing and in the corner of my eye: I tried to leave comments but it just wouldn’t go through. I read and loved your words 🙂 Hope you get to see this if the comments didn’t appear on your blogs eventually which it sometimes do anyway.
I am from the year of the dog. Fits perfectly, actually. I am getting these emails very late. More than a day. Perhaps it’s my email service? Good to see everyone and I look forward to reading.
I think the Monkey is monkeying around with cyberspace…so many with problems right now!
I believe so too.
Good morning all…(at least here in California). I’m here to help Toni whose computer is afflicted with viruses and pop-ups and looking forward to reading some more fortunes.
I was late on this one, but I loved it!
https://purplepeninportland.wordpress.com/2016/02/12/happy-feet/