Happy Australia Day! Happy Chinese New Year!

Australia Day and Chinese New Year day fall on the same day this year. Funny thing, that lunar calendar.

I'm being completely un-Australian and doing some work today; I have to apply for my own job, as it was a tap-on-the-shoulder thing and policy requires that you can only act in a position like that for a certain period of time in Government, and then the job has to be advertised and appointed properly. Or something. All I know is I have some serious selection criteria to respond to.

So, it's no BBQ for me, no Triple J Hottest 100, no beach cricket. Just a computer, a headache and a whole lot of corporate jargon.

We headed into Brisbane's Chinatown to celebrate CNY on Friday night. Aaron and I are both in green and on the left in the first pic, and that's me trying not to get mowed down by a lion dance in the second pic.

Foot binding

For about a thousand years in China, ending officially in 1911 through government enforcement (though unofficially the practice continued in some areas for some time), the feet of young girls were bound tightly in bandages in order to make them smaller. The ideal size was 3-inches and a foot that achieved this size was known as a Gold Lotus.

There are diverse opinions on the origins of this brutal practice. You can read about some of them at the Wikipedia entry or this research paper. Another useful reference is this NPR radio report, Painful Memories for China's Footbinding Survivors.

The process was pretty gruesome. It involved breaking toes and folding them down towards the heel. The toes were secured tightly with wet bandages which were replaced every two days, at which time the replacement bandages would be pulled even tighter. Women with bound feet were not able to carry out physical work and often could only hobble, not walk. This guaranteed their fidelity to their husbands and also ensured their inability to participate in politics and other worldly business.


All images licensed under Creative Commons. Images 1, 2 and 4 by johnbullas. Image 3 by plassen.

It's a numbers game!

Last we heard there were eight couples in our batch, but that hasn't been confirmed yet. Apparently the Dept cannot release batch-buddy details to each other until everyone has consented regarding how much info they will share, and there are people who have not done so yet. I hope it is eight couples as it will add to the excitement with eight being a lucky number in Chinese culture.

Yes, here's the Lucky Number Eight post I promised many weeks ago.

When we lived in China we were invited to the opening of an Irish bar at 8pm on the 8th day of the month. We questioned the late opening time and were told that it would bring good luck and prosperity, but we weren't entirely sure why. I asked our mandarin teacher why, and she said it was because the Chinese word for eight - 'ba' - sounds like the Chinese word for wealth - 'fa'. Which doesn't make much sense to me really considering so many words in Chinese sound similar. But the Chinese can be a suspicious bunch, and truthfully I find it quite intriguing.

The impact of the auspiciousness of number eight is quite significant. You may recall the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony kicked off at 8 mins and 8 seconds past 8pm on 08/08/08. My friend at work married her Chinese husband on the same day, along with presumably thousands of others of this heritage around the world. Mobile phone numbers and car license plates can fetch big bucks if they contain the right numbers too.

It's not just the number eight which is significant. You could devote your life to learning about the impact of numbers and number combinations in Chinese culture. The number 4 is unlucky - 'si' because it sounds like the word for death, and 14 is even more unlucky - 'shi si' - because it sounds like want to die. There's only one number I really want to know right now, and that's the date of our Log-In with the CCAA!

Image by KayVeeINC