Jun Fu may not look like it, but she’s a rabbit.

Like most people from China and throughout Asia, she knows the zodiac sign that ruled during the year she was born.

Tradition holds that rabbits like Fu are financially lucky, attractive and sociable. So does that description fit her?

“No, not really,” says Fu, office administrator for the Center for East Asian Studies at Kansas University. “You can’t choose it, you know. We don’t pay attention to these characters.”

They may not pay much attention to the zodiac animals, but people from most Asian countries will be paying plenty of attention to traditions tonight as they celebrate the Lunar New Year – and usher in the Year of the Dog.

While New Year’s celebrations in the United States typically focus on drinking booze, watching Dick Clark and lighting an occasional firework, Lunar New Year traditions run deeper, with rituals and superstitions meant to honor family and bring good luck for the upcoming year.

“It is the most important holiday to the Chinese people,” Fu says. “It’s kind of similar to Christmas (in the United States).”

Festive food

The Lunar New Year is celebrated with the new moon in January. Though many Westerners call it “Chinese New Year,” it’s actually celebrated throughout Asia.

In China, Fu says, family and food are key elements for the Spring Festival, which is what the Chinese call the Lunar New Year to avoid confusion with the new year of the Roman calendar.

Most of the food cooked has symbolic meaning, Fu says. For example, families make fish, which in China also is the word for “extra.” They make the fish on New Year’s Eve but don’t eat it until the new year.

At midnight, people in China shoot off fireworks to scare off evil spirits.

And on New Year’s Day, youngsters in China visit the elders to receive red packets filled with money. That’s a tradition found in several Asian countries.

Good luck

Other Asian countries share some of the same traditions while developing some of their own.

In Vietnam, for instance, parents don’t yell at their children during the first few days of the new year, and no one cleans their house for fear of sweeping out the good luck. They also eat roasted watermelon seeds dyed red for good fortune.

“It means a new beginning,” says Thao Nguyen, a KU student who spent the first eight years of her life in Vietnam. “It’s so important to us. The first few days we have so many superstitions about what we do.”

Determining luck for the new year also is an important tradition in Korea, says Maija Devine, a Korean language instructor at KU. Families read their fortunes out of a book on New Year’s Eve.

“I remember as a child, we used to put pine nuts on the end of some kind of a metal wire, and we used to light the pine nut,” Devine says. “If it really burned nicely, and there was a lot of light and flame, it meant prosperity for the new year.”

Koreans also get up early on New Year’s Day to purchase a bok jori – a scoop used to separate foreign materials from rice. The “lucky scoops” are meant to remind Koreans to wake early, and the earlier they’re purchased, the luckier they are.

“It’s a day of restraining yourself,” she says. “You don’t go outside and party. You stay inside the house with family and reflect upon what you did well and didn’t do well in the previous year. It’s a day of reflection and being careful so you don’t draw bad luck to yourself.”

Fu, the KU employee from China, says she hasn’t been back to a Lunar New Year celebration in more than a decade. But she’s planning to watch the festivities through satellite TV. And she’ll be focusing on positive thoughts to bring good luck for the Year of the Dog.

“You have to be careful in the new year,” she says. “You always think of happy things, good things.”