When I came to visit Auntie Hong just before Christmas, I found her busy preparing for the Chinese New Year. She had bought sacks full of sticky rice and brown sugar. Auntie Hong makes the traditional cakes called kueh keranjang (basket cakes) for an extra income during the Lunar New Year. The giant wok used to make the dough had been taken out to be cleaned and so were the baskets in which the dough is to be poured.

"Auntie isn't it too early for the Chinese New Year preparations?" I asked.

"Well, actually I am late," she answered. "The fasting month has started and our New Year will be just before the end of the fast isn't it?"

"No Auntie this year, the Chinese New year will not coincide with the Lebaran, but will be in February."

She was dumbfounded. We had Chinese New Year coinciding with Lebaran for the last three years, maybe she thought that it would be same again this time. But no, she had heard it from someone else, a person who came to order her cakes. I called this person and asked her, where this news came from, but she had also heard from someone else, but she would call me back. After a string of telephoning, she called me and told me that it was an order from Hongkong. Apparently a temple had advised the Chinese in Indonesia to celebrate their New Year before the Lebaran to avoid riots, because there was less likely to be riots during the fasting months.

It sounded like a good advice but was it possible? The Chinese calendar has been established since the days of the Yellow Emperor, the first of the five August Emperors who lived around 2500 B.C. in China. They had invented tools for the farmers and fishermen, such as the plough to tilt the land and the nets for capturing fishes and birds. They also noticed that there was a rythm in the change of the time such as day and night and the different seasons. Thus they invented the calendar to record these changes. This calendar has been used by emperors and farmers to determine the time of important decisions and operations, such as sowing, harvesting etc. In fact, the Chinese character for "year" represents a man carrying a sheaf of grain on his back, in other words, the annual harvest. This show how closely linked the calendar is with the life of the farmers. When Dr Sun Yat Sen succeeded to overthrow the Manchus in 1911 and announced that under the new republic the New Year will celebrated according to the Western calendar on January 1st, people still went on to celebrate the old traditional New Year, which was more meaningful for them.

Now, what will happen when suddenly a group of people decide to move the New Year and celebrate it a month earlier than established? The answer is that not only will the whole year become disorganized in terms of holidays and festivals, but the effect will also be felt in the following years. This is because the calendar is based on calculations with very complicated astronomical equipment. In 104 B.C. The Grand Astrologer and Archivist Szu-ma Chien made changes to the then existing calendar, and marked out the points east and west, set up sundials and contrived waterclocks. With such means they marked out the the first and last days of each month, the equinoxes (when the sun crosses the equator and day and night are of equal length) and solstices (Summer solistice begins with the longest day and Winter solistice with the longest night), the movements and relative positions of the heavenly bodies and the phases of the moon.

The duration of one month is a cycle of the moon, just like in the Arabic calendar, the difference is that the moon must be sighted on the first of each month for the Arabs, whereas the Chinese has the first of each month before it is sighted and arranged in such a way that the 15th of each month coincides with full moon. That was why last year and the two years before last year, the Chinese New Year fell on one or two days before the Idil Fitri Holidays. The reason why the two festivals do not coincide this year and for the next thirty four or thirty five years to come is because the Chinese calendar had a leap month last year. These leap months occur twice in 5 years to adjust the spring season and the beginning of the year.

These calculations for the calendar date since 106 B.C. and have been perfected by the Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci and his successors in the 17th century. It was Verbiest, a Flemish Jesuit who had done outstanding work in the field of astronomy and now the Chinese can predict the positions of the moon and other heavenly bodies for many, many years in advance, which means that the Chinese calendar has been arranged many years in advance and can not be changed for whatever reason.

The New Year for the Chinese is not only the beginning of the year, but also the beginning of the four seasons. There are many rituals to be observed before the year ends and the New Year is heralded. One week before the end of the old year, the Kitchen God departs to heaven to report the situation of the family he has been guarding to the main God and that is why houses have to be cleaned, and most important of all, debts have to settled. The image of the Kitchen God is smeared with honey, so he will bring sweet news about the family.

And when finally the New Year has arrived, it is welcomed with firecrackers, because the roads has to be cleaned from evil spirits. For three days the world is at rest and people do nothing but visiting friends and relatives to pay respect. Of course they have to wear their new dresses, usually red in color, because red is the color of good luck and festiveness. They are served cookies, sweets, oranges and nuts, all of which have to be eaten because of their symbolic meaning. Lion dance groups may come to pay visits and perform their latest tricks. Of course they expect a substantial angpao. a red envelope containing a sum of money, because they bring good luck to your house. Children and unmarried women too receive angpaos.

The lunch at home is meant for the family members to get together. For the wealthy the meal should include abalone, sea cucumbers and other delicacies, but one dish should never be left out: the fish. How it is served is not important but fish should always be present, for the sound "fish" is similar to the sound "abundance" and that is what every family family has in mind for the year to come.

On the fifteenth of the first month, the full moon invites people to go outside to celebrate. Untill the early sixties, Jakarta still had the celebrations in Glodok, where young people would come together and hoping for a chance to meet thier Prince Charming. Girl would throw mandarin oranges to the boy of their choice and when the attraction is mutual the boy would take further steps to meet. There are also celebrations in the temples, where the gods are taken out and carried in a sedan chair to join in a procession. Afterwards people will enjoy a meal of lontong Capgomeh, rice cooked in banana leaves with chicken and tempe and tofu cooked in coconut milk. This meal is a proof, that the Chinese community is Indonesian rather than Chinese, because the recipe is purely Indonesian.