In English, “Congratulations, and be prosperous!” No mention of a happy new year, just plain old congratulations for your success and be prosperous! That’s the Chinese way, greet the new year with a command, not a mere wish for you to make it, as Americans put it.
Tomorrow is the first day of a year that can only be kinder, better, brighter. Where else is there to go but up, if only slightly, after you’ve sunk to the bottom of the sea floor? If feng shui scholar Patrick Lim
Fernandez promises a calmer, less volatile year, we should tend towards believing him not only because his head is steeped in Chinese metaphysics but because his academic and professional background involves banking, business and management engineering, data analytics backed by years spent managing other people’s assets and money (as a tech-savvy banker in London and quite a few cities in America). A good thing he speaks plain English!
English-speaking or not, Confucianist societies like China, Taiwan, Hong Kong,
Singapore, perhaps even Japan and Korea have one other thing in common, the lunar calendar. Based on the phases of the moon, today’s calendars are a throwback to olden times when their forefathers “made it” as farmers and fishermen who lived and worked with nature, the times and tides, in harmony with their fellowmen.
In the 21st millennium, 2021, modern institutions like our very own China Bank gifted feng shui-oriented calendars to their clients – what a charming way to say Happy New Year without saying it in those
words, what a solid way to enhance the bank’s image as being time-tested and faithful as the four winds, the four seasons, the Five Elements.
Feng shui doesn’t predict your future but it can see which way the wind is blowing, which way the water is flowing. In the Year of the Ox, a stubborn but reliable beast of burden, can we work as hard as Manny Villar? We could, but how to reap similar or equal results? The only wealthiest Filipino in the world’s list of richest philanthropists is an Ox – it’s your year, Manny V!
