In defence of wealth and money this Lunar New Year

If there is one holiday that unapologetically celebrates prosperity and all the promise that money represents, it is Chinese New Year. And it is glorious. Children line up with palms outstretched, reciting “Gong hei fat choy” with giddy delight as adults slide crisp, red envelopes stuffed with cash into their hands. Adults exchange an endless cascade of blessings, wishing each other a year of abundance, big profits, and career advances. At home, doors are adorned with poetic couplets inviting wealth to enter. The character for “fortune” is pasted upside down because the word for “upside down” is a pun for “arrival.” Everything gleams in red and gold—colours meant to activate positive financial “chi,” the woo-woo energetic equivalent of bullish market sentiment. Even the snacks are strategic. We gorge ourselves on mandarin oranges, not just because they are sweet and delicious, but because the word for the fruit sounds exactly like “gold.” Candy is wrapped to resemble gold bullion or coins. And we eat noodles to wish for longevity, so that ideally, there’s more time to enjoy all that great fortune. Talk about the power of manifesting. For 15 days straight, there is no ambivalence about ambition—about wanting more in life, and no ambiguity around what that “more” actually means. If this all sounds like worshipping money, then well, you’re right on the money, so to speak. Enter Choy Sun. Choy Sun—more formally known as Caishen—is the Chinese god of wealth. During Lunar New Year, his image appears on posters, door hangings, temple altars, even animated stickers in family WhatsApp chats. He is typically depicted in imperial robes, holding gold ingots, sometimes riding a fish—a nod to the Chinese word for fish, which sounds like “surplus.” We sing about him much the way Westerners sing “Here Comes Santa Claus” at Christmas. Here comes Choy Sun, here comes Choy Sun… The cult of Choy Sun draws heavily from Taoist traditions, though over centuries, he has also been absorbed into popular folk religion and even Buddhist practice. Like many Chinese deities, he is a composite archetype shaped by regional history and storytelling. His function, however, is far more straightforward. He brings prosperity. Importantly, the god of wealth is not a god of greed. In one popular New Year song from Hong Kong, a lyric captures this distinction with surprising clarity. Translated loosely, it goes: “Here comes Choy Sun, here comes Choy Sun, You better run a little faster to catch him up. Here comes Choy Sun, here comes Choy Sun, Gotta earn your keep walking the straight and narrow path.” But that translation is imperfect. It imports a familiar English idiom with Biblical roots—“the straight and narrow”—that subtly distorts the original meaning. In Cantonese, the phrase literally means “walking the main boulevard.” In other words, the opposite of a narrow path. The main boulevard is where commerce happens, and where everyone can see you conduct yourself under broad daylight. It is an image of public legitimacy rather than moral constriction. If you want to catch Choy Sun, you run faster, yes. You better hustle. But you do it on the main road rather than in back alleys and cutting corners in the dark. The cultural imagination here is expansive, with room for many to walk side by side, rather than austere and lonely. And perhaps that is the deeper lesson hidden beneath the red envelopes, loud music, and riot of red and gold decor: prosperity is something to chase boldly, openly, and honestly. Wealth is nothing to be ashamed of when it’s obtained legally and ethically. It comes with the freedom to provide, invest, build, and give. Surely that is something worth celebrating.