This may be the year of the Ox, but so far it’s decidedly unbullish.

The Chinese New Year celebrations start Monday, but there’s not a great deal to cheer about this month. The Canadian dollar is down about two and a half cents from its January high, oil has lost about $2 a barrel and the TSX is off about 700 points from its high point this month.

In Beijing, the Chinese finance minister suggested this is going to be one ox-like lunar year.

In the curiously obtuse language of the Chinese bureaucracy, Xie Xuren said the internal and external factors affecting China's development are "very severe." The finance ministry’s website said more difficulties must be overcome to achieve steady and relatively fast economic growth.

Xie urged officials to avoid unnecessary spending this year, with local governments ordered to curtail car purchases, catered meetings, and overseas travel.

If you didn’t know an ox is a castrated bull, it should be pretty obvious by now.

The Chinese New Year is generally celebrated with lavish spending and exchanges of "hong bao," or red envelopes stuffed with money.

More and more of those red envelopes have been passing between Canada and China.

Since 2001, China has been Canada’s second-largest trading partner, after the United States. Statistics Canada says the value of imports to Canada in 2007 was $38.3 billion.

Computers and telecommunication and related equipment dominated imports, although the agency says games and toys, apparel and footwear, and furniture and fixtures also contributed to the rise. In fact, even with all the recalls from lead-paint, Canada imported $1.2 billion worth of toys from China in 2007.

Statistics Canada says the import value of what it calls culture goods from China increased 11 per cent from the year before to $328.4 million. Nearly 60 per cent of these goods were books, newspapers, periodicals and other printed materials.

Even a casual glance at the toy shelves and bargain bins suggests trade is little one-sided. The Chinese sell far more to Canadians than they buy and Canada's trade deficit with the Middle Kingdom was $29 billion in 2007.

Still, Statistics Canada says overall, exports to China increased 21.2 per cent in 2007 to nearly double its value of 2003.

Exports to China were responsible for nearly one-fifth of the total growth in Canada's exports in 2007. The Chinese tend to prefer Canadian commodities more than manufactured goods.

Canadians and Chinese are also becoming more interested in checking one another out. China was the tenth most popular place for Canadians to visit in 2007, with 258,000 visits. Hong Kong was the 12th, with 177,000 visits.

And 157,000 Chinese visited Canada during the same period, with 115,000 Hong Kong residents taking in the Canadian sights.

Canadians have really started to get a taste for China.

Statistics Canada says the amount of rice available for consumption reached 5.2 kilograms per Canadian in 2007, nearly double what it was in 1986. The price of rice increased 2.5 per cent in 2007 from the year before.

Not all of the soybeans grown here are turned tofu, but Canada has become the world’s seventh biggest producer of the beans. China is fourth. And while it wasn’t that long ago most Canadians couldn’t spell ginseng, we grew $91.4 million worth of it in 2007.

Statistics Canada points out that the chrysanthemum is an important flower in many Asian cultures. But who knew it kept rigorous track of the chrysanthemums produced in this country?

It does. In 2007, we grew 14,778,500 mums, about two pots for everybody in Hong Kong.