Feb

Chinese New Year

Jon Seah on February 8th, 2008

Chinese New Year is one of those big events for all Chinese families. For family events, it is equivalent to Christmas for whities, Hari Raya for Malays, Hanukkah for jews (?) and many other big family events for other races/religions. For chinese new year, it lasts for approximately two weeks and it features lots of food, gambling and most importantly hong pao for the singles (me!! woot!!).

One of the huge events is the reunion dinner which occurs on chinese new year eve. This is the big event where all families unite and have a massive dinner. To my grandmother this is an extremely important dinner because that’s when she gets to see all her children together and “all must be happy”. This is where you hold all grudges and ensure you have a fun time. With the reunion dinner, it is nuts as my grandmother/family had cooked around 36 dishes!! Luckily this dinner didn’t just consist of my family but other members of the temple. Still there was heaps of left over which we had to try and finish.

The following day (chinese new year) is an event which was crazy. My grandmother loves lion dances so she ordered not one but two sessions; one in the morning and the other in the arvo. The lion dances usually consisted of two to three pairs of guys masquerading as lions (one head one tail). These lions would do a little dance, pray to all the Buddhas, bow to the oldest in the house and travel to all the rooms in the house to bring in the good luck. The lions would “eat” a tray of veggies and fruits where the guys in the lion suits would make a bouquet to be presented to the head of the house. Where it gets hectic is that the lions would then grab all the coins in a bucket of water and throw to people. It is tradition that those who gets a coin will have good luck for the year. So you can imagine for all the “kia su” asians out there, everybody would tread over fingers, toes and bodies for these coins. No one is safe so if you don’t want to get trampled upon, get out of the way! *runs away to protect his camera*. You’d figure this would be for kids but oh no even adults join in for the fun. As a finale the lion is supposed to jump for the hong pao which the lion trapeze would keep.

Remember, we didn’t have just one but two sessions of lion dances. Don’t know why my grandma did this but I’d say she was crazy (jk jk). Based on the events of that day, I’d have to say the arvo session was much better for the showmanship and more importantly they were Chinese! The morning session were malays from Limbang as that association had ran out of their own people to do the lion dances. When the lions were jumping for the hung pao, I was kinda hoping that they’d fall so I could have got a better shot. Guess they practiced… Sigh and I was using my quick lens some more