Chinese New Year

There are trips to the bank for crisp, untouched dollar bills; shopping excursions for new clothes; and ingredients for banh chung. Kitchens have been scrubbed until they shine and plans laid to make sure the first visitor after midnight on Friday is someone lucky. Blending ancient traditions with modern interpretations, families throughout Orange County are celebrating the most important holiday of the year in Asian cultures: the lunar new year.

With layoffs spreading and the traditional annual bonus cut or eliminated this year, many Chinese were in no mood to splurge during this week's Lunar New Year holiday -- even in a well-off city like this one.

Despite the years of sacrifice and grueling practice, ballet dancer Vina almost turned down a plum role in her first 2004 Chinese New Year show. Since emigrating from China nearly eight years before, she'd given up dancing because of a nerve injury that radiated pain from her lower back through her left leg, making it difficult for her to stand for longer than 10 minutes at a time.

Bing Wang and Shaun Gong plan to ring in the Chinese New Year Wednesday by taking their 10-month-old daughter, Anna Ying Gong, to Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights to burn incense in hopes it will bring her extra good luck.

This is China's Year of the Rabbit. It is also a year of fateful Chinese anniversaries. The important question for the rest of the world is whether this could be a year of political unrest and social upheaval, too, in the world's most populous nation.

Monday night, in millions of homes across Vietnam, families took their last baths of the year, to wash off the dirt of past misfortune, and held send-off ceremonies for the kitchen gods who ascend to heaven to give their annual report to the Jade Emperor on the moral conduct of household members.