In the Year of the Golden Pig, hopes run high on the hog

Better skip the bacon -- at least until 2008.

This is the Year of the Golden Pig, which comes once every 600 years, bestowing extra helpings of wealth and good fortune, according to Chinese astrology.

Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year -- year 2075 by the Chinese calendar. With it comes a flood of Golden Pig merchandise and a projected baby boom in China and Korea, where women are rushing to conceive Golden Pig babies.

"Everybody wants to take advantage of opportunities this year," says Kye-Eun Ma, founder of the Friends of Grace Seniors Korean Community Centre in Englewood. "I'm planning a lot of events for this year at the centre, and I hope it brings good luck."

For most Asian-Americans in New Jersey, the special year is little more than a source of fun and amusement, an excuse to buy kitschy golden pig T-shirts and greeting cards from online sites like China sprout.

But some take it more seriously.

Joseph Chong, a Korean obstetrician-gynecologist at Hackensack Medical Centre, has seen a handful of Korean patients hoping to have little Pigs of their own.

"There are a few people who are kind of serious. They have to have a baby this year," says Chong.

Their timing, he contends, was influenced by Korean-born parents, hoping for lucky grandchildren. "The patient population isn't closely attuned to it, but their parents, they calculate it," he says.

In Korea, which uses a Chinese zodiac system, pigs, or boars as they're also known, are a beloved symbol of fertility and abundance, so the Golden Pig year is especially popular there.

Chinese astrology, based on a lunar calendar, features 12 birth signs, each standing for a specific year and symbolized by an animal. Last year, for example, was the Year of the Dog, a sign associated with loyalty and considered a good time to get married.

Each year is also linked with one of five elements: wood, metal, fire, earth and water. This year is a Fire Pig Year, which occurs once every 60 years. But because it's the 10th Fire Pig Year in a 600-year cycle, that makes it golden, says Marie Diamond, a feng shui expert who writes Chinese horoscopes for AOL.

Overseas, the Year of The Golden Pig has generated hype and even controversy. The Chinese government banned television ads featuring gold-painted pigs, claiming they didn't want to offend the country's sizable population of Muslims, who revile pigs as unclean.

Korean folklorists have disputed the authenticity of the Golden Pig Year, citing little mention of it in Korean history. Some view it as propaganda, designed to boost the country's low birth rate or generate extra dollars for the baby-product industry.

It caught on anyway.

In South Korea, during the first 18 days of 2007, condom sales were down by 15 percent compared with last year, a drop attributed to the Year of The Golden Pig, reported Asia week online.

In Beijing, health officials expect a total of 150,000 babies born this year, compared with 129,000 in 2006, posted China daily online.

But that won't top 2000, the Year of the Golden Dragon, when 36 million babies were born in China, compared with 19 million the previous year, according to health statistics cited by China.org. (A Dragon Year is considered the luckiest time to have a baby, and a Golden Dragon is especially lucky because it occurs every 60 years.)

Although belief in Chinese astrology was suppressed during the Communist Cultural Revolution, which banned religion in 1966, the tradition revived after 1976, when laws were relaxed.

"My grandparents, they knew about it but they were not allowed to speak," says Lan Jiang, who owns Hands Across the Ocean, a cultural consulting company in Berkeley Heights. "Last year, when I went back to China, my mother gave me a pendant with four animals for each person in my family. She believes that the pendant will guard our lives here."

For Asians in the U.S., and many educated Asians overseas, such customs are mostly "quaint," says Linda Lindsey, a sociologist who specializes in Asian culture at Maryville University in St. Louis.

Edison Mayor Jun Choi, who emigrated from Korea as a child, was born a Pig in 1971. But he places no stock in his horoscope.

"For me, it's just an interesting cultural tidbit," he says.

At Chinese New Year celebrations in New Jersey, the Golden Pig made a token appearance. The Pike Run community in Montgomery, home to about 100 Chinese families, was to award a golden piggy bank to the youngest baby at its New Year's show yesterday. The Huxia Chinese School of Morris County bought Golden Pig decorations for its New Year's party in Parsippany and gave a brief lesson about their symbolism.

"We do it to make the kids happy," says Diana Zhang, who teaches at the school.

Despite some scepticism, many hope Golden Pig publicity isn't all hogwash.

"If it's a lucky year, you want to believe," says Ma. "The bad things, you don't believe, but the good things, why not?"

BY CARRIE STETLER

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-11/117177761197300.xml&coll=1

Carrie Stetler may be reached at cstetler@starledger.com or (973) 392-1713.