2006 > Chinese New Year of the Fire Dog > "Gung Hay Fat Choy"
(a New Year greeting meaning, "May you become prosperous")

According to the Chinese traditional Solar (Hsia) calendar, Chinese New Year starts on 29 January in 2006, signaling the start of the 4703rd year, and a new zodiac animal cycle: Bing-Xu; the Year of the Dog.

Chinese, or the Lunar, New Year is the main holiday of the year in much of Asia, and for about a quarter of the world's population.

The Lunar New Year dates from 2600 BC, when the Chinese Emperor Huang Ti introduced the first cycle of the zodiac. Lunar New Year is celebrated with 'dragon' dances, firework crackers and gifts of money in red packets (Ang pows) to help bring luck and prosperity to companies, individuals and families.

Each year of the lunar calendar is represented by a zodiac animal as part of a 12-year cycle. Some people believe your year of birth associates you with particular character traits.

According to the Chinese zodiac - 2006 is the Fire Dog year. It's Fire burning on top with the Earth underneath. The last time we had a Fire and Earth Dog year was 1946 at the end of World War Two, the first year of peace and recovery.

Fire sitting on top in 2006 is Yang Fire which is like the Sun. It symbolises optimism, openness, caring and warmth. It is said that there is likely to be more open and honest attempts at peace talks and negotiations leading to more harmony in the international and national arenas, something which has been lacking lately. The Fire Dog is very socially conscious of rights and wrongs, so we can expect that this coming year will bring a strong focus on injustices in the world, on political policies that are wrong and the ordinary person will be more questioning of their leaders and their leaders' decisions.

With Fire over Earth, the earth can be strengthened, but if it gets out of balance we'll have the earth erupting, so expect many great fires, the eruption of volcanoes (fire in the earth) earthquakes, landslides, explosions due to earth causes or perhaps to fossil fuels, and other influences emanating from the earth that can upset the balance of the environment. Many environmental issues could come to a head this year as our consciousness of the connections between our economic system and the world's climate become clearer.

... Or so it goes ...

A bit of extra trivia:
The Chinese diaspora are the fifth largest ethnic group in Australia - the largest concentration being in Sydney, followed closely by Melbourne. Whereas the Greek diaspora is seventh largest ethnic group in Australia.