THE YEAR OF THE OX

Photo taken in Chinatown on Sunday.

Gung Hei Fat Choy or Happy Chinese New Year to you all.

The year of the Ox.

When I was growing up in Hong Kong, one of my dearest friends had a house on a tea plantation right next door to a Buddhist Monastery on Lantau island. Her house is still there, slightly overshadowed now by the giant Buddha that was built some time ago to which people travel for miles to pay their respects. We used to play in the monastery and wander around the temples to our hearts content, lured inside by the smell of the wafting incense sticks and the gaudy gold deities surrounded by red prayer flags and fruit and other such offerings.

My mother gave my brother a book on Chinese Zodiac signs for Christmas this year. He passed it straight on to me. I have always found their predictions to be scarily accurate (even my last fortune cookie which told me that if I wasn’t so disorganised I wouldn’t be in such a mess!).

The legend goes that one Chinese New Year, more than five centuries before Christ, Buddha invited all the animals in creation to come to him. All but 12 animals ignored the call and to thank them Buddha offered each animal a year which would be dedicated to them alone through the ages. Each year would carry that animal’s name and express his symbolic character and his specific psychological traits, marking the personality and behaviour of people born during that year. The lunar astrology for the Far East was based on the annual cycle of lunar movements, which is why their New Year never falls on exactly the same date each year.

The Ox is the second of the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac and somehow, the characteristics seem to be appropriate for our current climate because it symbolises prosperity through fortitude and hard work:-

A hard worker, well balanced and patient with a great sense of responsibility – a slow, calm, obstinate and tenacious force.

The chinese celebrate at home with their family for their lunar celebration, just as we do for Christmas. Each year at this time, it is apparently the largest single movement of humanity on earth with about 188 million people returning to their homes from the cities in China.

Barrack Obama was born in the year of the Ox.

It is interesting therefore to look at some of the characteristics listed in my book that make up such a person;

“Talented or not, he will end up with more than he started with, for he is an assiduous, even plodding worker. His secret is perhaps simply that he enjoys working and that he likes to prove to himself that he is capable of being first in the class”

In his family life “Oxen are exceptional parents. As honest with their children as they are with themselves, they never ask anything of a child which they would be incapable of themselves. They give their children a constant feeling of security, having a marvellous gift for tempering authority with kindness”.

In their professional life “the Ox appear calm, obstinate and patient, but they are also ambitious and, no matter what they say, love power”. “Thus a true Ox will always tend to choose positions which carry heavy responsibilities rather than for reasons of status, for he feels that the work accomplished is in itself a measure of esteem”. “Oxen never abandon a problem. They always find a solution, sometimes an original one: they can be relied upon for their fairness”. “Oxen tend to be found in administrative and political professions. They are born to direct and administer”.

However, there are some inauspicious signs for Mr Obama. The sign is in direct conflict with a Chinese divinity called the “God of Year” (although I believe it helped that he re-took his oath on a different day). He also happens to be the 44th president and in Chinese, the number 4 is deemed to be extremely unlucky because “four” is pronounced the same as “death”. This is not good. The Chinese are so superstitious about the number 4 that I remember many houses and flats in Hong Kong that would go from number 39 to number 51. However, I think what Mr Obama needs to do is get in touch with me. I can help him this year. We would work well together. We could add his 44 to my age and focus instead on 88. This combination is perfectly fat and happy and highly regarded.

Other famous Oxen include:

My Brother, Aristotle, William Blake, Richard Burton, Albert Camus, Dante, Machiavelli, Napoleon, Nehru, Nixon, Walt Disney, Wellington and …. Hitler.