Happy Chinese New Year! The chi of gratitude

Happy Chinese New Year to all my friends here, coming to visit my blog. I want wish everyone a very prosperous, strong, and healthy new year, the year of the Tiger. What a good year to look forward to.

I am very grateful for all of you, for your willingness to be friends with me. And telling me how much you have enjoyed painting along or watching me paint, and just relax and be friends. Even though I don’t have a lot of chances to get feedback, I treasured every one of your comments. My daughter recently installed a spam block so I hope it will work great and I will be able to see all the comments. And that the spam blocker will not block yours.

I moved to the United States when I was 15 years old, it was a very important decisions of my parents. It later led to their divorce, but not so much because of the move. With the coming to a different continent of course brought a lot of challenges, so many to talk about. But at the end of my father’s life, he told my sister he is happy that my sister and me were able to adjust to the American way of life. It comes naturally to me, as I think I am easily adapted to my surrounding. However it was hard on my older brother, not that he did not love America, he however has a very hard time adjusting to society, socially and professionally. As of now he certainly loves the stock market though, that is one thing he is very familiar with. With being here, one of the way I overcome the challenges is to keep the traditions going. I have always loved all the Chinese holidays, it was always magical to me. During the years when my family was running a Chinese restaurant, my father had almost all together abandon the traditions, we celebrate nothing, not Chinese nor American. We were the only restaurant opened on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and Thanksgiving too. So when I saw the movie A Christmas Story, I really had a good laugh. Surprising we had customers coming to the restaurant on Christmas Day, quite a few too. During those years, I think my father was very down, down on being away from his families and China and Hong Kong, had never really adopted the food in his diet. We had a very hard time with cheese, probably couldn’t digest it. But now I still have problems but not my siblings though. So when I finally have my own family, we celebrate everything. All the western one and the Asian ones. With my husband lived in Hong Kong for two years it certainly helped. Somehow I was able to pass my magic and the traditions of the cultures to my children. Now my older daughter will try her very best to put a Chinese New year dinner together. We also celebrated Moon Festival too. That was fun for the children. And my younger daughter also caught onto the magic of the traditions.

One of the biggest magic of CNY is extending of greetings and good luck on the morning of the New year. So as soon as I woke up, I would send greeting through text to all my family. And then I will go on social media and extend good wishes to all my friends and so on. And the Chi of good luck, is that when one receive a good wishes from anyone, one will have to wholeheartedly be grateful and willing to accept the good wishes, without guile and pretense, honestly and happily without worrying about the care of oneself and the world to accept the wishes. And to furthur seal the good wishes, it will be very nice if one will extend same wishes to the wish giver, and add on to it with more good wishes, then the good chi will be sealed for both parties. So on this day, I spend almost all day sending out public and private wishes and also receiving good wishes from close friends and families. And we also give children unmarried adults red packet, which is what you see in my pic up there, the red envelope with money. When a child sees an adult, the first thing expected out of their mouth is to wish good luck and prosperity to the adult, and adult will give the red packet as good luck and lucky money to seal up the good wishes. This will go on for a few days. So in the spirit of good wishes, I will take time out of my regular plan and paint my little duckling with a four leave clover, so for those of you who paint along with me or watch me, you can be showered with good wishes and I will explain a little more about the good chi of gratitude, so that we will all be edify and understand about happiness, gratefulness and self sacrifice and all the good luck that will bring. Let’s do it. After this post I will post the aspen of house sparrow and then you can expect the good wish and good luck of my lucky duckling.

So I will take this chance to wish all of you a very happy New Year, all the good fortune and good health you can enjoy, and hope you can receive it with your heart, and all of my skills that I extend to you in all the videos pass and future, and that you will enjoy without guile and good wishes.

I am quite a shy person, but I thought this is a good time to post a pic of me, with the traditional Chinese good wishes fists together. And know that I am grateful for you, and all the friendship you extend to me. Hope you will communicate with me often. And we will be a nice group of friends and painting family. Good wishes to you till next time.

Kathy