There are some old customs that only a few people or even no one does any more. People still do their "spring cleaning" before the holiday but, in old China, they didn't sweep or wash clothes on New Year's Day itself. They were afraid of cleaning away good luck together with the dirt. For the same reason, some people did not wash their hair and were very careful not to break any tools. The 5th or 6th day after New Year, when they cleaned and threw away or burned all the trash, was a day for "sending off" the God of Being Poor, one of the sons of Zhuanxu. Today, it's more common to clean things as they get dirty, like on other days. Few do anything special about the God of the Poor. In the same way, people near Beijing thought that it was unlucky to cook or steam food for the first 5 days of the New Year. They would cook all of their next week of food 2 days before it, so it was ready for the reunion meal. They'd add yeast to their dumpling skins the day before that, on the 28th day of the 12th month. The skins would have enough time to be ready but not enough time to go bad. Today, people cook or eat out all through the week. It is easy to buy ready-made skins at supermarkets, keep their homemade skins fresh in fridges, or just buy all their dumplings from nearby shops and there is nothing special about the 28th day. On People's Day, the 7th day of the holiday, people used to wear special headbands and thought good weather meant good luck for everyone in the coming year. Everyone used it to count their age, even when it was not their birthday. None of that is common any more.
Some traditions have been ended by the Chinese government. People used to run to be the first to set off fireworks and firecrackers at the beginning of the New Year at midnight, wherever they were. The dirty air this caused in big Chinese cities made children and old people sick. Now, the police stop people from doing this in many cities.
Taoist traditions that are less common now are giving gifts to the home's kitchen god on the 23rd or 24th day of the 12th month of the old calendar. People said the kitchen god watched the house for the Jade Emperor, the boss of the Chinese gods. The special decorations and gifts were given to him so that he would say nice things. The gods would then be nicer to the house for the next year. The kitchen god was thought to return to the house on the 4th day of the New Year. During the time he was "away", people used to feel they could get away from some hard rules about family life without anything bad happening. In the past, love matches would marry during those days with less rules and expense than a full wedding. Today, the days after the Chinese New Year are a common time for weddings but this is because everyone has time off work and not because of any ideas about luck or worry about the gods. In the same way, people used to give animals to Cai Shen, the god of money, on the 2nd or 5th day of the holiday. People used to take a break from visits on "Red Dog Day" ("Chìgǒu Rì"), the 3rd day of the holiday, when an angry god was said to bring bad luck to anyone walking around outside. Now, fewer and fewer people worry about those things.
The reunion dinners on the day before Chinese New Year are often the largest and most expensive of the year. Some families use special and expensive foods to gain face; others use meaningful foods to bring luck. Jiaozi (a kind of dumpling) are common in northern China. People think they look like the old Chinese silver bars and hold luck inside. Egg rolls and spring rolls like lumpia can also be made to look like golden bars, and oranges and tangerines are thought to look like gold coins. Noodles like "yīmiàn" or Filipino pansit are eaten uncut to wish for long life. Some dishes are eaten because their Chinese names sound like lucky words, such as "fish" and "well-off". In Cantonese, "vegetable" sounds the same as "having money" ("choy") and "leek" sounds the same as "counting-and-planning" ("suan"). Because of this Cantonese people in China and in other countries try to have some during the New Year holidays. Niangao, called "tikoy" in the Philippines, is a kind of cake made from fried sticky rice and sugar. It is very common in southern China. In Chinese, its name sounds like "nián gāo" ("the year gets better") or "niánnián gāoshēng" ("getting better year after year"). Some people also think its stickiness is like a glue and use it as a wish for holding their family together. Indonesians call their niangao "basket cakes" because they mold theirs in bamboo baskets. They also have some special flavors in addition to vanilla and chocolate like pandan, a tree with good-smelling leaves. Some people fry tikoy with eggs; basket cakes are often steamed with pieces of coconut meat. Because most Chinese people in the Philippines speak Hokkien and not Mandarin Chinese, they also like to eat pineapples. In Hokkien, the word for "pineapple" sounds like the word for "having a lot of money".
Some Chinese also put out "Trays of Togetherness", dishes with eight different parts and eight different kinds of snack foods. Some common things to put in these trays are kumquats, longans, pieces of coconut meat, peanuts, candies, and melon and lotus seeds. Eight is a lucky number to many Chinese people, like seven in Europe and other places. These dishes are very common among Malaysian and Indonesian Chinese.
For the Lantern Festival, the special food is yuanxiao, small balls of sticky rice in a sweet soup. Lichun always happens near the Chinese New Year as well. It is celebrated by eating spring pancakes ("chūnbǐng").
Suite (music)
In music, a suite (pronounce "sweet") is a collection of short musical pieces which can be played one after another. The pieces are usually dance movements. The French word “suite” means “a sequence” of things, i.e. one thing following another.
In the 17th century many composers such as Bach and Handel wrote suites. They were collections of dances: usually an allemande, a courante, a sarabande and a gigue. Sometimes other dances were included as well, e.g. a minuet, gavotte, passepied or bourree. Sometimes the first movement was not a dance movement but an introduction. It may have been called a prelude or even overture. Some of Bach’s suites were called "Partitas". The French composer François Couperin called his suites "Ordres".
Bach wrote suites for orchestra which he called "overtures". Handel wrote two very famous collections of dance movements for orchestra: "Water Music" and "Music for the Royal Fireworks". These are also suites although they are not given that title. He also wrote 22 suites for keyboard, and Bach wrote "French Suites", "English Suites" and "Partitas" for keyboard as well as partitas for unaccompanied violin and suites for unaccompanied cello.
Earlier composers, e.g. Renaissance composers, had also written suites, but the word “suite” was not used until around the middle of the 17th century.
By the 1750s composers had stopped writing suites. They were more interested in the symphony and concerto,
In the late 19th century, the word "suite" started to be used again. Composers who had written opera's or ballets with lots of popular dance movements often made an arrangement of these movements for orchestra so that it could be played at concerts. Tchaikovsky wrote the "Nutcracker Suite" which includes the most popular dances from his ballet "The Nutcracker". Some composers used the word "suite" for pieces with movements which had a common theme: Gustav Holst called "The Planets" a suite, as each movement is about one of the planets. French composers of the Impressionist period such as Ravel and Debussy wrote suites for piano.
Suite
Suite might mean:
Michael Chang
Michael Te-Pei Chang (; born February 22, 1972) is an American retired tennis player. He was the youngest-ever male winner of a Grand Slam singles title, when he won the French Open in 1989 at the age of 17.