Things I thought about doing in the blog today to celebrate Chinese New Year:
- Say “Gong hey fat choy!” as we were taught in elementary school social studies, because that is how you say “Happy New Year” in Chinese.
- Point out that it is correctly transliterated as “Kunghei fatchoy”, but that that the lessons of my determinedly English speaking elementary education weren’t that far off when it comes to pronouncing it.
- And then point out that “Kunghei fatchoy!” actually means “happiness and prosperity” in Cantonese, but that it is listed as the second most popular Chinese New Year Greeting on the chinahighlights.com Happy Chinese New Year reference page.
- Or I could tell David Letterman’s old joke about how it is now the Year of the Monkey but I am still writing Sheep on my checks.
- Then I thought about writing about my favorite kind of monkey and maybe posting some cool pictures of monkeys.
- But I’m not sure what my favorite monkey is– maybe a Japanese snow monkey? Or a colobus? Or that big kind that hoots and yells?
- [Edit] Actually, my favorite monkey is probably a baboon.
- So maybe I would post some festive Chinese New Year decorations with monkeys on them, but Google Image Search came up with either serious ones or kiddie ones, not the classic Chinese buffet decorations I was looking for, with monkeys dressed in elaborate and colorful Chinese court dress.
- And then I searched my own phone for pictures of monkeys, in case I had any that I had forgotten taking, and I found this picture of the new monkey switchplate* in the kitchen. I picked this out on a whim at WalMart recently because I hated the old switchplate and really, everybody needs a switchplate in their kitchen with happy monkeys and flowers floating around on a lavender background.
![monkeyswitchplate1-blog]()
Plus, with their long eyelashes they are probably intended to be girl monkeys as opposed to the monkeys on most monkey switchplates which are boy monkeys more or less by default. Long live gender equality in America’s monkey switchplates! - Gong hey fat choy, everybody!
*”Monkey Switchplate” would be a great name for a band. Or a comic.
