: : Chinese New Year Celebrations : :
The Year of the Horse Goat (thx to moniqus for the pointer. somehow, the horse made a better impression on me than the goat!) is coming to an end and the Year of the Monkey is about to start. Already, the madness of traffic jams at departmental shops and supermarkets have started to drive everyone nuts. At a snail’s pace, owning a car during this trying period is enough to drive one insane, being made to go round and round a parking lot where cars are double-park.
However, after successfully finding a parking slot, it is now time to play Push-&-Shove at the supermarkets. Everyone has the same idea to get their shopping down early. Squeezing through any available space with their shopping trolleys and baskets, they aggressively plow through the shopping lanes, grabbing nearly everything in sight.
Then, it’s off to the pay for the shopping goods. The queue is worst than the airport flight schedule with 2 counters out of 4 being open and at least 10-20 people standing in line with a mountain full of Chinese New Year (CNY) goodies. The supermarket drones workers rush to pack the plastic bags and fill the shelves. The worst times are on CNY eve where shops are opened until midnite!
As for drinks, people are rushing to place orders at the cheapest place selling them. Carbonated drinks are usually bought at either MJC or Top Point for the cheapest deals whereas the crates and crates of beer and other alcoholic beverages are ordered at MJC or other means and ways. For me to tell would get me into trouble. Suffice to say that it’s ironic that it is in front of a police station but it isn’t in Kuching.
Flight tickets are booked at least a year and a half in advance. Buses going back home will be filled with Chinese families going home to meet up with relatives. Cities and towns all over will come to a standstill with most hawker stalls and business being closed for at least a week. Jackie Chan movies will be the rage on the 1st day of celebration with many a youngster going out to watch the movies.
On the telly, CNY advertisements will be shown at every available interval. Dunhill will have it’s traditionally lion dance theme advertisement with unbelievable kung fu moves. Petronas will be having their family theme advertisement on showing multi-racial relationships between children. Perodua will always have an amusing parody them advertisement. The one aimed at the younger generation would be Coca-Cola with their Cuba Try and tongue-in-a-cheek jingles. Not to be outdone, F&N and Miranda carbonated drinks will be giving Coca-Cola a run for their money with their old advertisements.
The post office will be flooded with pink envelopes with CNY greeting cards in them, travelling the world over. Everyone is sending everyone else a red greeting card with pictures of good luck pictures : Japanese carp, Chinese characters fortelling good fortune for the New Year, Mandarin Oranges, Firecrackers, AngPow (red packets), Chinese gold ingots.
On the eve of the 1st day, Chinese families will be sitting down and having their compulsory dinner together. Yee Sang has now become a firm tradition amongst all and orders will be placed at various restaurants all over the nation for early bird orders. Note that Yee Sang does not come cheaply so be forewarn for 1st timers wanting to try it out. That is, the fresh Yee Sang is not cheap. The supermarket version would be much cheaper.
The gambling starts on the eve of CNY where all the Chinese males will start playing 21 (blackjack) or chow tay tee (throw the big two) or it’s a family do for a long session of mahjong. This will go on into the wee hours of the morning where the gamblers sleep at dawn and wake up at noon all panda-eyed and hangovers from the heavy amounts of beer drinking and XO toasting.
Firecrackers is now banned in Malaysia but during CNY eve, everyone is playing it all at once that it’s impossible for the police to hunt down the offenders. However, the ban has managed to curb the all-night playing of firecrackers which is suppose to scare away the ghosts. Fireworks are allowed though. The nightline will be filled with beautiful colors and sparkles falling down to the amusement of children all over.
Little children will be jumping up and down with glee knowing that they will be receiving a lot of angpows (red packets) filled with money. However, their parents will usually grab it all and put it into their children’s savings account for the future. The children will find (to their dismay) that as they grow older, the quantity of the packets will be less and less as they grow older. My memories of angpows were my father giving us empty boxes that used to contain JD or JW bottles, to put all our packets together. It is a tradition that the married couple must give out angpows and the unmarried singles receiving them.
It is now quite fashionable to have one’s food catered from outside. Not only does it save a lot of planning for the family in terms of food preparation but it also ensures that the food is halal for the muslims. It is expected of daughters to be serving the drinks and monitoring the caterers to ensure the food is constantly replenish. This is a chore from sunrise to moonrise whereby guests would be pouring in during the lunch hour to have a nice meal and chit chat with the family, or rather, the family member that is free to chit chat with them.
It’s a crazy time during Chinese New Year. And the Chinese do it every year. I haven’t even covered most of what is practice during CNY but perhaps within the next few days, will be able to post something up. Dr. Liew, how about some help here?