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Lunar New Year
According to the old Chinese lunar calendar, the celebration of the New Year starts on the first day of the new moon and ends with the Lantern Festival fourteen days later at the time of the first full moon.
Traditionally, the Chinese New Year was known as the Spring Festival. New Years is a time in many cultures to begin anew with wishes of good fortune and happiness for the coming year.
In China, bad luck and evil spirits are driven away by dragon dances, firecrackers, and the color red. Oranges symbolize prosperity because the word for orange sounds like the word for gold in Chinese.
Peach, plum or wintersweet blossoms symbolize luck because the beautiful blossoms appear magically from bare, ugly branches. The fragrance of narcissus heralds a year of good fortune.
In Japan, it is considered good luck for your first dream in the New Year to include Mt. Fuji, hawks and eggplants. Decorations combining pine, bamboo, and prunus branches welcome good luck into the home. Known together as the “Three Friends of Winter,” they symbolize long life (pine), resiliency (bamboo), and perseverance (prunus.)
Best Wishes in the Year of the Boar
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Chinese Lingbi Stone, Anonymous gift, 2005
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Chinese Lingbi Stone, Gift of Daizo Iwasaki, 2005
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Chinese Ying Stone, Anonymous gift, 2005
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Mountain Stone, Setagawa River, Gift of Kenichi Oguchi, 2001
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Japanese Black Pine, In training since 1906, Gift of Goro Ito, 1975
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“Sunrise over Mt. Fuji” by Okada Tamechika (1823-64), Gift of Chuji Sugii, 2005
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Shochikubai (Pine, bamboo, prunus) ikebana by Sachiko Furlan
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