2013 Year of the Snake

[GeneChing]

新年快樂

We've posted Kung Fu Horoscopes for 2013 Year of the Snake (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/info/horoscope/index.php).

Chinese New Year is observed this Sunday, FEB 10, although I'll be celebrating it more formally the following weekend at the Extraordinary Martial Artists of the World Lunar New Year Gala in Vancouver (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1204563#post1204563). From all of us here at KungFuMagazine.com, we wish you health, wealth and happiness, and may your kung fu be full of qi (http://www.martialartsmart.com/95-036w.html)!

See our Year of the Snake T-shirts (http://www.martialartsmart.com/95-2013kt.html), Hoodies (http://www.martialartsmart.com/95-2013khd.html), Henleys (http://www.martialartsmart.com/95-2013khl.html) and Long-sleeve Ts (http://www.martialartsmart.com/95-2013kls.html).

[GeneChing]

This story is interesting just to know that there is a Temple of White Snakes in Taiwan. That sounds like an awesome Kung Fu villain lair.


Chinese world worries that Year of Snake may bite (http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Chinese-world-worries-that-Year-of-Snake-may-bite-4262034.php)
By ANNIE HUANG, Associated Press
Updated 2:45 am, Friday, February 8, 2013

http://ww2.hdnux.com/photos/17/66/75/4157277/3/628x471.jpg
In this photo taken on Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2013, Director of the Temple of White Snakes Lo Chin-shih holds a genetically modified, auspicious, white snake as he talks about its significance in the upcoming Chinese lunar new year of the snake according to the lunar zodiac calendar in Taoyuan county, in north western Taiwan. Lo said the new year of the snake would be a time of steady progress, in contrast to the more turbulent nature of the outgoing year of the dragon. The Chinese new year fall on Feb. 10. Photo: Wally Santana

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — As Indiana Jones might say: Why did it have to be the Year of the Snake?

When the Chinese-speaking world ushers in its new year on Sunday, its 12-year zodiac will turn from the dragon to one of the world's most despised animals. As undeserved as the snake's reputation might be, its last two years did not go so well: 2001 was the year of the Sept. 11 attacks and 1989 was when Chinese forces crushed pro-democracy protests around Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Some wonder if this one also could hold bad tidings. "In Chinese mythology, snakes were often associated with monsters, or with incarnations of monsters, so some political turbulence can be expected," said Taiwanese astrologer Tsai Shang-chi.

Chinese New Year remains the most important festival in the region, a weeklong round of family reunions, temple visits and gastronomic excess. It is Mardi Gras, Christmas and the Fourth of July rolled into one, marked by the clacking of mahjong tiles and explosions of firecrackers. With businesses and markets hermetically closed, it brings a rare calm to the otherwise frenetic pace of what is arguably the world's most dynamic economic region.

In China, some couples have apparently been trying to schedule their pregnancies to avoid having children born during the snake year, in contrast to the coveted Year of the Dragon.

In Beijing, a manager with the government office that arranges appointments with obstetricians said there was a noticeable drop in appointment requests compared to those received as the Year of the Dragon approached, though she offered no firm statistics. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the press.

For souvenir makers, snakes have been a tough sell.

"Last year, our business was a lot better, because everybody loves the dragon, whatever his or her animal sign," said Lin Peixiang, who owns the Beixiang Souvenir Factory in the city of Wenzhou. "This year, business is a lot worse, because only those born in the year of the snake love the animal. The snake sign is a symbol of fear. People get scared when they see or hear the snake."

But if many fear the snake, some astrologers and masters of feng shui, the Chinese art of arranging objects and choosing dates to improve luck, also see good signs for 2013.

Hong Kong feng shui master Raymond Lo is trying to put a positive spin on the year. He points out that according to astrological tables, this year's variety is the relatively mild "morning dew" type of common water snake, less venomous than recent predecessors.

"It's more moderate, humble and patient," Lo said of the 2013 snake. He added that he is bullish on the year's prospects for the world as a whole, and sees good opportunities for economic growth.

Still, Lo said, people should probably take precautions against the snake's traditionally destructive power, perhaps by wearing monkey pendants around their necks. That goes double for anyone born in a year of the snake, he said, like incoming Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Xi's 1953 birth coincided with the final convulsions of the Korean War.

"The monkey is the only animal that really knows how to handle the snake," Lo said.

Tsai is also largely upbeat on the new Chinese year. He believes much-needed liquidity will be injected into struggling world economies, and that babies born over the next 12 months will be both self-motivated and agile.

On the down side, he warned, there could also be massive flooding and tsunamis.

The New Year's season is implacably festive, and people have been out in force in cities across the region in recent days, stocking up on provisions and traditional new year symbols.

In Taipei, revelers were particularly enamored of snake-shaped paper lanterns supplied by the municipal government, as well as coins imprinted with snake logos and snake-like toys thought to bring good luck.

At the Temple of White Snakes in suburban Taoyuan county, director Lo Chin-shih presided over a glass-encased display of dozens of slithering snakes, replete with flashing pink tongues and slowly molting skin, a symbol of change, renewal and hope for a better future.

Lo said this snake year will be a time of steady progress, in contrast to the more turbulent nature of the outgoing dragon year.

"Unlike dragons that make abrupt, attention-getting moves, snakes take slow and steady steps," he said, making it clear he considers the hiss of the Year of the Snake worse than its bite.

___

Annie Ho and K.M. Chan in Hong Kong and researcher Zhao Liang in Beijing contributed to this report.

[pazman]

This story is interesting just to know that there is a Temple of White Snakes in Taiwan. That sounds like an awesome Kung Fu villain lair.

http://www.rudysarzo.com/images/bio/Whitesnake.jpg

These guys appreciate your interest.

[sanjuro_ronin]

Gotta love the snake
http://www.areyounakie.com/article-images/9007562_3ed9_625x1000.jpg

[David Jamieson]

Ride the Snake (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xczm9g_ride-the-snake_fun#.UReoIWeQEWI)

[SPJ]

Have something sticky or nian.

Have a fish or yu.

Have bountiful.

Nian Nian You Yu.

On new year's eve dinner table, every food item carries some meaning for good fortune.

You eat/have some sticky rice or sticky cake.

You eat/have a fish.

You eat/have nian nian and yu.

You have bountiful (http://shyhwenj.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/glutinous-rice-fishes-happy-lunar-new-year/)

http://vine.co/v/bvetIlwU76U

http://vine.co/v/bve9Iw09YOd

:cool:

[Kellen Bassette]

No-one wants to tame snakes anymore. :(

http://http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/07/us-hongkong-snake-soup-idUSBRE9160P220130207

[PM]

http://sphotos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/604120_211792462298565_1163446960_n.jpg

[EarthDragon]

Happy new year to all my chinese family and friends

[GeneChing]

I must say that I am enjoying all of the snake stories. Anyone else here ever have a snake banquet? It's sort of like a Peking Duck banquet but with multiple courses of snake dishes.


China's 'Snake Village' seeks New Year riches (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/world/chinas-snake-village-seeks-new-year-riches/story-fnddckzi-1226574789890)

AFP
February 10, 2013 2:39PM

FOR Zisiqiao in eastern China, the arrival of the Year of the Snake carries a special meaning, as the scaly reptile has given the tiny village its main industry and prosperity.

In the 1980s, villagers began raising snakes for food and traditional Chinese medicine, transforming the village in Zhejiang province near Shanghai.

Scores of households now raise serpents, earning the settlement of more than 800 people the nickname "Snake Village" in Chinese media.

They include Gao Shuihua, 50, who began breeding snakes three decades ago instead of the traditional farming and raising fish.

"We were poor before. We didn't have anything else to do so we started raising snakes," he said.

The snake is not considered to be among the most adorable of Chinese zodiac animals - which are based on the lunar year and not the calendar month - but Gao said they provide food and medicine as well as his livelihood.

"Some people don't like to eat snake because they think it's weird. But every kind of snake has its own method of preparation," he said, adding he preferred his in soup, which makes the meat more tender.

"Business ought to be better this year because of the Year of the Snake," he added, as he pulled out glasses for visitors to sample his homemade snake ***** wine - the males have two such appendages - made from the venomous Chinese krait.

http://resources3.news.com.au/images/2013/02/10/1226574/789107-year-of-the-snake.jpg
Snake farmer Yang Xiubang checks the opened snakes which are dried in air in Zisiqiao village in Zhejiang Province which is known as China's first snake village. Local raise more than 3 million snakes a year which are used for traditional medicinal products and food. Picture: AP /Eugene Hoshiko

His nephew praised the drink's benefits. "This is a tonic for building up health. It's especially good for men."

But Gao warned: "If this snake bites you, you will be dead in four hours."

Upstairs in one of the bedrooms, the family keeps nine buckets of sharp-nosed vipers preserved in alcohol awaiting sale to traditional medicine factories, which pay 3 yuan (45 cents) apiece.

Snakes were worshipped by the earliest Chinese as a totem, with millennia-old stone carvings depicting Fuxi and Nuwa, the mythological ancestors of all Chinese, as half-human, half-snake.

And some historians also believe the dragon, regarded as China's national symbol and typically depicted with a long serpentine body, was based on images of snakes.

Huang Guangyu, 25, believes that medicines made from the creatures are highly effective.

He suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, or arthritis of the spine, and came to Zisiqiao from his home in the southern province of Guangxi after reading about the curative properties of snake.

Huang takes a daily ****tail made from several species. "It's not cheap," he said, but added: "I couldn't even walk last year."

He is a client of the Deqing Snake Culture Museum, opened by Zisiqiao's most successful businessman Yang Hongchang, which combines a treatment centre, tourist attraction and retailer.

Inside a specially heated room, hundreds of snakes dulled by winter hibernation rest in wooden boxes including the notorious "Five-Step Snake", so venomous that its victims are said to die within five paces of being bitten.

But such dangers are far from Yang's mind. "We wish for business success and happiness in the Year of the Snake," he said.

[David Jamieson]

I've eaten snake. It's good and yes, it tastes a little like chicken with the texture of pork.

[SPJ]

Watching tai chi 1 and 2 over the stormy weekend.

No snow but rains in So Cal.

Laugh so hard watching the movie.

guai ka.

strange foot

3 flowers consolidated on the head.

--

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b343/SPJ/IMG_20130211_121234_zpsbda818fb.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b343/SPJ/IMG_20130211_121040_zps4e44955d.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b343/SPJ/IMG_20130211_121105_zps6bd18c5d.jpg

:cool:

[GeneChing]

Win TAI CHI ZERO (http://www.kungfumagazine.net/index.html): begins at 12:00 a.m. PST on 02/08/2013 online entries must be received by 6:00 p.m. PST on 02/21/2013.

http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/561601_10151520882504363_1744640790_n.jpg

[MasterKiller]

http://thechurning.com/images/mooseknuckle.jpg

[MasterKiller]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_wBJC9wfky8A/S7pDleepTTI/AAAAAAAAABc/AVtK9mrH5as/s1600/cycle+shorts.jpg

[Syn7]

Ima snake!

[Syn7]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_wBJC9wfky8A/S7pDleepTTI/AAAAAAAAABc/AVtK9mrH5as/s1600/cycle+shorts.jpg

That's some blatant **** right there.

[GeneChing]

I declare sanjuro_ronin the winner.

[GeneChing]

Follow the link for pix - they've got it coded so it's a pain to cut & paste.

Hong Kong 'snake kings' a dying breed (http://news.insing.com/tabloid/hk-snake-handlers-soup-shops-dying-breed/id-936c3f00)
by Venus Wu (Reuters)
inSing.com - 8 February 2013 3:25 PM | Updated 10 February 2013 10:52 AM

(HONG KONG) When a king cobra lunges at Chau Ka-ling as the door to its wooden cage falls open in her busy Hong Kong restaurant, she just laughs, then pulls it gently into her arms.

For Chau is a "snake king", one of scores in Hong Kong who have through generations tamed snakes to make soup out of them, a traditional cuisine believed to be good for the health.

Yet the people behind providing fresh snakes for the savoury meal thought to speed up the body's blood flow and keep it strong in the cold winter months may be doomed, with young people increasingly reluctant to take on a job they see as hard and dirty.

"He is my boss, he supports my living," said Chau of the snake she cradled at Shia Wong Hip, a popular shop that serves over 1,000 bowls of hot snake soup on the busiest winter days.

Trained by her father in childhood to handle snakes, Chau, now in her early 50s, took over the business he founded, serving up a small bowl of soup for HK$35 (S$5.60).

From boiling the essence out of snake, chicken and pig bones, to spicing it up with an array of ingredients that include five types of snake meat, the traditional southern Chinese snack can take more than six hours to make.

Snake meat is seen in a bowl of snake soup served at a snake soup shop in Hong Kong (Photo: Reuters / Bobby Yip)

Yet as the cold deepens in the weeks leading up to the Chinese New Year and the Year of the Snake it ushers in on 10 February, Hong Kong locals huddle inside small street shops like hers.

The thick soup is flavoured with hints of lemongrass, while the snake itself tastes like chicken but is tougher.

"Snake soup can help you stay healthy, and when the weather is cold it helps keep you from catching the flu," said customer Stephen Lau.

FALLING NUMBERS

While soup stalls remain popular, scattered across the former British colony, retail snake shops have diminished to a slithery few, such as the 110-year-old She Wong Lam.

Inside, more than 100 snakes lie quietly in wooden cupboards labelled "poisonous snakes" as the clicks of an abacus echo through the dimly lit shop.

Over the decades, he has trained about 20 people to become snake handlers – and said he has a few tried and true tips to help people put aside their fear of the venomous creatures, including starting them out on snakes whose fangs have been pulled and thus are no longer dangerous.

"Then, after he has been bitten a couple times by a snake that is no longer poisonous, he will think, 'Oh, this is not painful, this is nothing, this is like being bitten by an ant'," Mak said.

"Then he will no longer be scared, and as he works more he will get more used to it."

But new blood is hard to find. The youngest employee in the shop has now been there more than 30 years.

"There won't be many. Firstly, it's crummy and dirty, and snakes smell," Mak said. "Secondly, the wages aren't high. So not many people enter the field."

Mak feels his job is less about making money and more about providing a service to society by keeping a tradition alive.

Yet even fellow "snake king" Chau says she has no successors trained, and has refused to do so.

"I've killed snakes for so many years, but actually I don't want to. Because there are fewer and fewer snakes now," she said. "But I can't make a career change. There's nothing else I can do."

And this one:

2,600 snakes discovered in shipment labelled 'fruit' (http://www.digitalspy.com/odd/news/a457741/2600-snakes-discovered-in-shipment-labelled-fruit.html)
Published Sunday, Feb 10 2013, 10:04pm EST | By Tal Dekel-Daks

2,600 live snakes have been discovered by Hong Kong customs in a shipment labelled 'fruit'.

The air cargo from Thailand was made up of 2,400 common rat snakes and 200 cobras, and reached China on Tuesday (February 5), a government spokesperson said.

The reason behind the reptiles is unclear, but the dangerous package arrived just days before the start of the Year of the Snake in the Chinese horoscope.

Chinese food embraces snakes into its delicacy, often in soups to boost blood circulation.

This cargo bust comes one month after $1 million (£633,000) worth of endangered seahorses and crocodile meat was caught being smuggled into Hong Kong.

A maximum fine amounting to $250,000 (£158,000) and a seven-year prison sentence can be enforced in Hong Kong for smuggling cargo into the city. Dang, that's a lot of snakes.

[SevenStar]

I was born in the year of the snake, so hopefully this is a good year for me.

[GeneChing]

Nevertheless, here is our 2013 Year of the Snake vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4nmh6y65ro).

[SPJ]

this is actually a money making year

invest wisely

and we may reap plenty

stock market

housing market

what have you.

It comes every 60 years.

It is a cycle.

:cool: