Whether it was to chase the gold rush, to set up a market garden, or to share their love of Chinese cuisine, the ancestors of Aotearoa New Zealand's Chinese population brought with them their skills and their heritage in the hopes of building a better tomorrow.
The Lunar New Year is an exciting time for new prospects for many nations including China, and is celebrated widely across Aotearoa New Zealand. Each Zodiac animal brings its own characteristics, providing a fresh approach to prosperity. 2026 is the Year of the Horse.
The story of Chinese New Year starts with Jade Emperor, who created the Zodiac calendar, a 12-year cycle to help track the passage of time. The Horse was chosen to represent the seventh year in the Zodiac after it placed seventh in the Jade Emperor’s great race. It’s said that the horse was about to come in sixth but was sabotaged by the snake who spooked it by sliding under its hoof and finishing ahead of its opponent.
Chinese believe that the Zodiac and the animal years in which people are born have a tremendous influence on their lives and personalities. The Horse is associated with effortless success. People born in the Year of the Horse are said to be agile, popular, and persuasive, attracting many friends with their vivacious personalities. However, they can also be impulsive, impatient and hedonistic, leading them to spend too much money too quickly, or to abandon projects halfway through.
The new year doesn't occur on a regular date of the Gregorian calendar, each year falling somewhere between January and February in accordance with the lunisolar calendar. If someone you know was born in 2014, 2002, 1990, 1978, 1966, 1954 or 1942, it’s likely that they will have been born under the sign of the Horse.
Mint set of four stamps:
$2.90 Lucky Peach - The peach symbolises a long and happy life, and in Chinese folklore it is used as an emblem of immortality. Displaying, eating or gifting a peach makes for a time-honoured lunar new year tradition. The peach is also used here to represent the contributions of fruit shops up and down the country. One standout name in particular is that of Jack Lum. His fruit and vegetable business has been operating in Reumuera, Auckland for over 50 years. While he might sell lucky peaches, it’s clear his enduring success comes from grit and hard work.
$4.20 Good Food, Good Fortune - This stamp shows a baby sharing spring rolls with a horse. The spring roll has such a long tradition with spring festival (also known as the lunar new year) that it shares the name with it. While it may seem like a humble snack, the spring roll is associated with wealth and prosperity. This connection between good food and good fortune is not lost on artist Bev Moon. Her art depicts spring rolls, pork buns and wontons in knitted form. Her work weaves together stories about the courage and resilience of her ancestors with a love of food cooked and shared with family.
$4.70 Giving and Receiving - In this stamp, horse and baby parade past lilies in bloom. Like many symbols associated with the Lunar New Year, these flowers represent good fortune and happiness. In her exhibition Tracing a Gilded Trail, artist Cindy Huang used lilies to honour the memory of the miners who first arrived in from China during the 19th-century gold rushes. Scant historical records remain, but it is understood that these men were subjected to great hardship and discrimination. Her installation consisted of hundreds of handmade porcelain lilies representing the real ones that flower annually near Round Hill, Murihiku Southland, once the southern-most Chinese settlement in the world.
$7.60 Service is Success - The stamp shows a couple of jubilant cherubs and their prize kumara. The kumara here is a metaphor for Mangere couple Joe and Fay Gock, whose generous spirit impacted the community and the country. They have been growing vegetables together ever since they arrived as refugees in the 1950s. Responsible for many horticultural innovations, Fay and Joe developed patented polystyrene boxes for ice-packed vegetables, introduced the first seedless watermelons, put the first stickers on produce and, most importantly, developed a black rot-resistant kumara which saved the Northland kumara crop in the 1960s. In 2013 they won Horticulture New Zealand’s highest honour – the Bledisloe Cup. Joe was also awarded the Queen’s Service Medal in 2015 for his outstanding services to the community and to horticulture.
