Discover 2 Unique Ways to Celebrate Chinese New Year With Traditional Flair
The first time I truly understood the magic of Chinese New Year celebrations was when I compared them to climbing the ranks in competitive tennis tournaments. You see, I've spent countless hours playing tennis games where the progression system works exactly like our traditional festivities - starting from being virtually unknown and working your way up to legendary status. That's what makes celebrating Chinese New Year with traditional flair so special; it's not just about doing things, but about mastering them through different levels of accomplishment.
When my family first moved overseas, we struggled to maintain our cultural traditions. Our initial attempts at celebrating felt like being an unknown player in those tennis tournaments - we knew the basic rules but lacked the finesse and strategy to make it truly meaningful. It took us about three years of trial and error before we discovered two unique approaches that transformed our celebrations from basic to extraordinary. The first method involves what I like to call "progressive tradition mastery," where you treat each aspect of the celebration like advancing through tournament levels.
I remember our third year abroad when we decided to approach our reunion dinner like preparing for a championship match. Instead of just cooking the usual dishes, we created a checklist of 15 traditional recipes we wanted to master, from the simplest dumplings to the most complex whole fish preparation. Much like in tennis games where you need to win specific numbers of matches to advance, we set targets of mastering at least 8 traditional dishes before we could consider ourselves "intermediate level" in our celebrations. The kitchen became our training ground, and each successfully executed dish felt like winning a minor tournament.
The second approach we developed focuses on status elevation through cultural immersion. Just as tennis players increase their prestige by tackling more challenging tournaments, we elevated our celebration status by incorporating increasingly authentic elements each year. Our first breakthrough came when we managed to gather exactly 12 relatives for our reunion dinner - representing the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. The following year, we progressed to making our own red envelopes with personalized blessings, and by our fifth year overseas, we were organizing community lion dances involving over 50 participants.
What fascinates me about both these approaches is how they mirror that tennis ranking system I love. You start with basic traditions - maybe just cleaning the house and eating dumplings - which is like playing in local tournaments. Then as you gain confidence and skill, you incorporate more complex elements like preparing elaborate offerings or hosting larger gatherings. I've found that it typically takes families about 2-3 years to move from basic to intermediate celebration level, and another 2 years to reach what I'd call "expert status" where traditions feel natural and deeply meaningful.
The beauty of celebrating Chinese New Year this way is that each achievement unlocks new possibilities, much like how tennis players unlock more prestigious tournaments. When we finally mastered making traditional niangao from scratch after 4 attempts, it opened up opportunities to share this skill with our neighbors, eventually leading to what I consider our "legendary status" moment - hosting a neighborhood Chinese New Year festival that attracted over 200 people last year. The parallel with tennis progression is uncanny; just as players need to complete specific training milestones, we had to master certain traditions before we could authentically share them with our broader community.
What I've learned through this journey is that traditional celebrations aren't about perfection from the start. They're about that gradual climb from unknown to legend, where each year presents new challenges and opportunities for growth. The system naturally ensures that by the time you're ready for more complex traditions, they feel challenging but achievable - exactly like well-designed tournament progression in sports games. This approach has transformed how my family celebrates, making each Chinese New Year not just a repetition of rituals, but an opportunity to level up our cultural connection and create genuinely memorable experiences that honor our heritage while adapting to our new environment.
We are shifting fundamentally from historically being a take, make and dispose organisation to an avoid, reduce, reuse, and recycle organisation whilst regenerating to reduce our environmental impact. We see significant potential in this space for our operations and for our industry, not only to reduce waste and improve resource use efficiency, but to transform our view of the finite resources in our care.
Looking to the Future
By 2022, we will establish a pilot for circularity at our Goonoo feedlot that builds on our current initiatives in water, manure and local sourcing. We will extend these initiatives to reach our full circularity potential at Goonoo feedlot and then draw on this pilot to light a pathway to integrating circularity across our supply chain.
The quality of our product and ongoing health of our business is intrinsically linked to healthy and functioning ecosystems. We recognise our potential to play our part in reversing the decline in biodiversity, building soil health and protecting key ecosystems in our care. This theme extends on the core initiatives and practices already embedded in our business including our sustainable stocking strategy and our long-standing best practice Rangelands Management program, to a more a holistic approach to our landscape.
We are the custodians of a significant natural asset that extends across 6.4 million hectares in some of the most remote parts of Australia. Building a strong foundation of condition assessment will be fundamental to mapping out a successful pathway to improving the health of the landscape and to drive growth in the value of our Natural Capital.
Our Commitment
We will work with Accounting for Nature to develop a scientifically robust and certifiable framework to measure and report on the condition of natural capital, including biodiversity, across AACo’s assets by 2023. We will apply that framework to baseline priority assets by 2024.
Looking to the Future
By 2030 we will improve landscape and soil health by increasing the percentage of our estate achieving greater than 50% persistent groundcover with regional targets of:
– Savannah and Tropics – 90% of land achieving >50% cover
– Sub-tropics – 80% of land achieving >50% perennial cover
– Grasslands – 80% of land achieving >50% cover
– Desert country – 60% of land achieving >50% cover
