SHE smiled as she remembered New Year back at the family home, when her mother would insist that the whole house was cleaned from top to bottom before the New Year began. Now that could have been a scene carefully drawn in a Broons album, as cleaning the house has been an old tradition in Scotland. Yet the woman telling me about it was Jian Wang, owner and chef at Mitchell Street restaurant Chop Chop, describing the Chinese New Year.

We like to imagine the Chinese New Year as mysteriously oriental - all firecrackers, drums, and dancing animals. There was a flavour of that at George Square on Sunday when the Chinese community in Glasgow extended the hand of friendship by showing off their culture. Alas the weather made it a bit more Splashing Tiger Drookit Dragon rather than a glorious spectacle. Some things in Glasgow, such as the weather, have no respect for festivals.

Away from the damp squibs, I talk to Jian who describes a new year in her native China that has so many parallels with Christmas and New Year in Scotland. The date is different of course. The New Year in China is based on the lunar calendar so can fall at anytime in late January early February. You will know that the year is named after one of 12 animals which rotate in sequence. This year is the Year of the Monkey. Jian though tells me something that is quite useful about this rotation. If someone lets slip what animal they are born under then you will know their age because of the 12 year cycle. In other words a woman may hint at being in her late forties but her animal means she is 42 or 54 - and there's no way she's 42. Miaow, as they would say in the Year of the Cat, if there was one.

But back to the family, which is really what the Chinese New Year is about. It is a time when everyone tries to get home to their family if they can - shades of Scottish first footing. It's why the Chinese railway system breaks down, and the roads are blocked, at this time of year.

Says Jian, who arrived in Edinburgh from Changchun in North Eastern China in 1997: "I remember having to clean the house with my mother for the New Year. Everyone tried to travel back to their villages. There were firecrackers being thrown in the street, but I remember most the dumplings we would make for the family. Eating is at the heart of the New Year." Shades of steak pies on New Year's Day in Scotland.

Jian continued: "And the colour red is everywhere. As children we would have new clothes for the New Year. But always something in red for luck. Red belts, red socks, red pants even. We would also be given little gifts of money which would be inside red envelopes." So this is more like Christmas, which of course was never celebrated in China under Communism. Oh and these dumplings that were cooked - not the large sponge dumplings we know in Scotland, but little parcels of food contained inside a flour casing. Some of them would have money hidden inside, which reminds me of the silver thrupennies mothers would bake inside their clootie dumplings at Christmas. I'm sounding like the Broons family again. "If you find money in a dumpling it would bring you luck for a year," says Jian.

Luck seems to play a large part in the New Year, but perhaps that is because of the lack of organised religion in the country and people turn their thoughts instead, not to God's intervention, but lady luck. Jian, like many Chinese, believes in lucky numbers. This sounds a bit difficult to understand but put it this way: perhaps you believe say, your mobile phone number is unlucky. So you change the number for one that has more eights in it - a good number for luck, which explains why an on-line casino you see advertised on the telly is simply called 888. Your new phone arrives, you like the number, and that day you have a job interview which is a good omen, and you get the job. You put it down to the new phone number. So that's daft you might think, but you could argue that just having the new number arrive that day gave you the confidence to do well in the interview, leading you to get the job. Did the new luckier number play a part in it?

Meanwhile at the Chinese home, everyone is eating, drinking and present giving. Says Jian: "On New Year's Eve you always go to your parents, and then your husband's family on the first day." Now that sounds very Scottish as well, working out which in-laws see you on Christmas Day and which have you over on Boxing Day. Family demarcation is clearly universal.

The cleaning of the house is to sweep away any ill-fortune. It is a time not to argue, and to make up with any family members that you have fallen out with. Perhaps a little different from Scotland where you are more likely to actually fall-out with a family member after a few drams at the Bells. But there has to be some differences.

And then you go visiting other members of your family - again similar to the old ways in Scotland where on New Year's Day, men would be seen with a shopping bag holding their Ne'erday bottle of whisky which they took round to toast people. In parts of China, mainly in the south, visiting relatives would even include stopping off at the cemetery to remember ancestors, and lighting a candle for them.

So on the face of it the Chinese New Year looks completely different, but look closer and much seems familiar. And perhaps they are luckier. Have you ever noticed that it's easier to get a taxi in Glasgow on the Chinese New Year than it is on January 1?