Kindness for All-Season: Well wishes beyond the New Year.
This year is a bumper Lo Hei year for me. I must have been to at least a dozen Lo Heis since the beginning of the lunar year, that is, just about one per day. Lo Hei is a wonderful local tradition that stems from the Cantonese dialect, meaning ‘tossing up good fortune’. It is the tossing of a salad with Yu Sheng or raw fish as the key ingredient. The pronunciation Yu Sheng sounds like 'overflowing abundance' and therefore symbolises ‘an abundance of wealth and long life’. The word hei in Lo Hei means ‘rise’. It refers to a thriving business, hence it is understandably a very popular ritual with businessmen during the New Year. From the kindness perspective, the ritual of Lo Hei is a very gracious act – an act where everyone wishes each other the best in every aspect of life. There are many Chinese four-character phrases to express their kind greetings. The ritual begins by wishing everyone prosperity (gong xi fa cai) and moves on to identify some ten in