Celebrating Birthdays: How Do Different Cultures Celebrate?

In China, being born automatically gives you a birthday. While in Western cultures you are born and then you live a year before celebrating your first birthday, in China you are born as a one-year-old. Additionally in some Chinese traditions, although less common now, you will have a further year added to your age on your first Luna New Year’s Day. By the time you reach what would be considered your “first birthday” in other cultures, you could be three years old with “East Asian age reckoning”.

There are some ages which are considered unlucky too, for women the main ones would be 30, 33 or 60. To avoid bad luck, a Chinese woman would remain 29 until she turned 31. Similarly, men dodge back by not acknowledging being 40.

As far as Chinese celebrations and traditions go, All birthdays need to be celebrated before or on someone’s birthday. Never late. Birthday cakes have made their way into traditions, but most importantly a longevity noodle would be eaten. This is an unbroken egg noodle that would fill an entire bowl. It would be slurped up in one continuous strand, so to not cut your life short. Other traditional birthday banquet foods would include red-dyed hard-boiled eggs (for happiness) and dumplings (for good fortune).