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China celebrates its Lunar New Year on Friday, marking the start of the Spring Festival, an 11-day public holiday.
The occasion is also observed in Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines as well as in Chinese communities in major cities across the world, not least in London’s West End, the biggest gathering of revellers outside of Asia (when the British capital is not mired in lockdown, that is).
A lunar year charts 12 complete cycles of the moon and lasts approximately 354 days, as opposed to our western solar year, which lasts 365 days in accordance with the earth’s passage around the sun.
Still, the Year of the Ox will impact us all in a few generally similar ways, according to both Levitt and
Pocket Chinese Almanacauthors and translators Joanna C. Lee and Ken Smith. Here s what they have to say about the meaning of the Year of the Ox, and a few predictions for what it has in store.
Keep your head down in the Year of the Ox.
While Levitt is an astrologer and student of feng shui, Lee and Smith get their almanac predictions from a Hong Kong-based geomancer named Warwick Wong. Long practiced in his family, Wong s style of Chinese geomancy is a form of divination, or forecasting the future, that observes astronomical movements and what Smith describes as “other atmospheric conditions.” Wong then interprets how these impact our lives down on earth, and his daily readings offer what’s lucky or unlucky to undertake (February 12 will be good for engagements or starting a business, but bad for rituals and paying out money). But Wong also gives Lee and Smith a gene