Sara Liu: New Year Feels

Every family seems to have their own unique New Year customs, and Sara Liu’s is no exception. “On Chinese New Year’s Eve, the older people in my family don’t wash their hair,” she tells Apple Music. “I remember when I was little how on New Year’s Eve we had to bathe with water that’d been boiled with orange peels. It signified good luck for the New Year.”   Those lucky orange peel baths seem to have worked. Ever since Sara reached stardom on reality talent show Super Girl in 2009, she’s built a solid pop career on a string of hit ballads that tug at the emotions and soothe the heartbroken. In 2019, Sara took a welcome turn into harder territory by joining forces with indie rock producer and P.K.14 frontman, Yang Haisong, for her latest EP, The Beauty of Indie.  With 2020 in sight, Sara shares a playlist that captures her New Year in music. The sound of the season for Sara is populated by dragon and lion dances, crackling firecrackers and the sounds of congratulations and good wishes. Sara’s playlist is curated to contain songs she’d expect to listen to on New Year, as well as some songs drawn from her memories of home and a few choice cuts of her own from 2019. “Must-hear songs would be ‘Here Comes Fortune’ and ‘Gong Xi Fa Cai,’”Sara says. “I think we can’t avoid hearing these songs every New Year. They best represent your impression of the holidays.”   Her hopes for the coming year are very much in the holiday spirit: “I hope I can bring in more income, earn more money, and I hope that everyone out there rakes it in,” she says.   But beyond making money, Sara knows that Lunar New Year truly revolves around family reunion: “All my relatives get some time off. Everyone’s worked hard all year, and we can start the new year with a break,” Sara says. “Chinese New Year has a feeling like it’s okay to take a vacation. It’s okay to go back home, see your family and older relatives. This is really important. It takes about four hours for me to drive back home, and that’s a really happy time for me. When I’m tired from work, whenever I think about New Year, going home is the thing I miss a lot.” Sara closed by offering good wishes to her listeners: “If I had to pick a Chinese word to represent New Year, it would be ‘Fu’ because Chinese people are all about lots of luck and fortune.” And as this year comes to an end, Sara leaves her listeners with an important reminder: Lunar New Year is a chance to start again. “If I had to pick a phrase it would be ‘Out with the old and in with the new.’ The New Year is about cleaning up and clearing everything out. Some things may have not gone so smoothly for you the year before, or maybe you’d like to change some bad habits, or perhaps you’ve done some not-so-good things. With the New Year comes a new start.”