Century of Butte Stories

Chinese New Year Was a Big Celebration in Butte

By John Astle

(A column featuring stories from Butte's newspapers during the past 100 years).

(The following description of Chinese New Year in Butte is from a newspaper story and a Ph.D. thesis by Rose Hum Lee.

(Rose Hum was born in Butte in 1904. She attended the Garfield school, Washington Junior High, and graduated from Butte High School. She moved to Canton, China in 1929 where she became president of the Womens' International Club. She married Ku Young Lee. When Canton fell to the Japanese in October, 1938, she escaped to Hong Kong and eventually moved back to the U.S. She had three sisters and two brothers, also born in Butte, who were living in China.

(Mrs. Lee received a BA degree from Carnegie Institute in 1942, and a MA in 1943 and a PhD in sociology in 1947 from the University of Chicago. Her doctoral thesis concerned the decline of Chinese communities in the Rocky Mountain region, principally Butte. She came home to Butte many times, visiting relatives and doing research for her thesis. She was chairman of the Department of Sociology at Roosevelt University in the 1950s. Mrs. Lee died in 1964 in Phoenix.)

When Butte's Chinatown was a Chinatown with several hundred inhabitants, preparations for the New Year entailed months of care and elaborate planning. Delicacies and trimmings were ordered from China and San Francisco during the summer, and boxes of food, firecrackers, and colorful red decorations would arrive in the fall.

A month before the holiday, women began preparing pastries and puddings, preserving them in huge crocks until New Year's Eve, when they would be taken from their hiding places and placed on treasured K'ang Hsi porcelain compots. Other compots would be piled with tangerines, oranges, and grapefruit.

Sharply at midnight, firecrackers were set off to chase away any evil spirits who may hover to mar the good luck of the New Year.' Those households which honored the Kitchen God' placed joss sticks at his shrine as well as appropriate offerings of rice, wine, and meat. This deity was greatly revered, for it was he who controlled the abundance or shortage of food during the coming year. ( A joss was a Chinese idol, and the Temple was referred to as the Joss House. A joss stick was a stick of incense burned before a joss. Butte's Chinese Temple was in the heart of Chinatown. It was torn down in 1945).

The community worship was performed by the guardian of the Temple, who collected contributions in advance for the necessary preparations. Devout worshippers, seeking prosperity for their businesses and their families in China, visited the Temple and made personal offerings.

The New Year menu consisted of 12 to 24 courses. Special festive dishes served included such delicacies as Jin Doi - a fried round pastry with sweet filling; Nien Koa - a steamed rice flour pudding decorated with dates and sesame seed; Tai Lung Kum - a halfmoon-shaped pastry filled with bits of pork, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, and mushrooms. Lacquer sweetmeat boxes were filled with candied ginger roots, lotus seeds, coconut strips and squares, melon rind, kumquats, and lichee nuts.

During the rest of the day, the children, dressed in new clothes, made the rounds while the men visited behind closed store fronts. All business was suspended for the day. As they cracked melon seeds, sampled candied dainties, or ate the fruit, especially imported grapefruit, the time passed quickly.

The women made their rounds when the feasting began. Resplendent in their brocaded, embroidered, long, plaited skirts and short jackets, and wearing jeweled flowers in their shining, smooth, black coiffures, the women spent the day chatting merrily with friends and relatives. To escape the prying eyes of the public, they would travel in closed vehicles. An aroma of sandalwood would fill the air and linger as they moved. Invariable they carried a beautiful fan and a perfumed, silk handkerchief. They all would greet each other with the familiar, "Kung Hsi," (Happy New Year).

Festivities lasted a month. Each household and business set aside a day for inviting friends to share in the New Year feast, which began the day after New Year and lasted until each family had its turn as host.

Today, these poignant scenes are nostalgic memories of the glory of Butte's Chinatown.