Happy Lunar New Year

To all my Chinese readers (I’m guessing there’re at least a couple), Happy Lunar New Year! I wish you and your loved ones all good health and prosperity in the year of the Rabbit. May you advance in the workplace or in your studies, and overcome all the troubles that may come your way. (And I hope you will continue reading my blog too, and let me know if you do!)

Actually I haven’t had the habit of making festive greetings on my blog, but a comment a friend made about Chinese New Year recently got me thinking, and I would like to share my thoughts here.

 

My reunion dinner is taken at home with my family every year. We usually have steamboat, with a variety of simple but delicious items. Let me share with you what we have this year. Here, we have tofu, crabsticks and cocktail sausages.

Basically, my friend made the comment the other day on Facebook, saying that he felt embarrassed when he explained the various Chinese New Year greetings to his foreign friends. I was actually quite perplexed by that comment, and asked for some examples. I didn’t quite agree with what he said though!

 

Chicken, pork and pork liver! Liver always look a little bloody, but I love the texture.

To the uninitiated, many CNY greetings revolve around wishing people good luck and prosperity. The most common 恭喜发财 (gong xi fa cai) means literally congratulations for getting rich. 心想事成，万事如意 (xin xiang shi cheng, wan shi ru yi) means to get what one wishes for; the often punned upon 年年有余 (nian nian you yu) means to have surpluses every year, with the pun on 鱼 (yu), or fish. 金玉满堂 (jin yu man tang) means to have a house full of gold and jade, which means a house of wealth. 福星高照 (fu xing gao zhao) means to have the god of fortune shine on you.

 

Yummy and healthy greens and mushrooms. Golden mushrooms, or enoki, is probably my favourite mushroom for steamboats, as they absorb the soup and maintain their crunchiness.

Not all of the greetings directly has to do with luck and money, of course. For working adults who are more junior than us, we wish them 步步高升 (bu bu gao sheng), or to rise up step by step. We wish students 学业进步 (xue ye jin bu) or to advance in one’s studies.  Of course, if any one really wishes to advance in the workplace or in one’s studies, one has to put in hard work. But we wish that their efforts pay off.

 

Fish and squid. So that we can have surpluses (余) – a pun on 鱼, or fish – every year.

As you can see, many of these greetings basically express goodwill towards others. We wish the best for others; they wish the same for us. While in Chinese we have a term for this – 礼尚往来 (li shang wang lai), which means to reciprocate courtesy – but I believe it’s very much a universal thing. During the CNY period, which is the most important celebration of the year, naturally we amplify the goodwill we express to others. Everyone wants a good year, and by wishing others the best, we ultimately also wish the best for ourselves.

 

All balls: plain ones made of fish paste, those with mushroom bits added in, chicken balls, cuttlefish balls… Always a delight to have, they add colour and shapes to the steamboat concoction, and cook extremely quickly as well. Kids love them.

Well, that’s it from me. Many of our Chinese traditions are slowly dying out in modern society. And soon I can foresee that Western traditions and festivals will dominate, if they haven’t already. That is sad, because there is very little to define what a Singaporean is to begin with. The erosion of what makes the Chinese here Chinese, seems to be an erosion of part of what makes Singapore unique – our racial/ethnical fabric. There is some revival of interest in Chinese language and culture now, but that is purely driven by commercial interest in the economic juggernaut of China. But I shall not be too pessimistic.

 

Steamboat is incomplete, however, without my favourite – prawns. Nothing like shelled prawns cooked in soup. This retains the natural sweetness and juiciness of the prawn – the way prawn should be enjoyed. (The de-shelled ones were prepared for my sis, who doesn’t like peeling them)

Actually I have a distaste for Western traditions because they are mostly heavily commercialised. Christmas,  Valentine’s Day, Thanks-giving, Halloween, etc… While they are interesting to celebrate they mean absolutely nothing to me. (No offense to Christians intended. I fully understand Christmas’ importance to you, you probably have to admit it is dominated by commercialism in many places these days.)

It’s also somewhat telling that most popular images of these traditions/festivals are about wild partying, getting drunk and shopping. I’ll take exchanging mandarin oranges and saying happy and fluffy things to family and loved ones any day.

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On a separate note…

Lunar New Year has never truly had any special meaning for me. In fact, for the longest time my feelings towards it had been more negative.

It definitely has got to do with my family background. Because of my father’s irresponsible ways, we were more or less cut off from both sides of the extended family through my formative years. So instead of visiting relatives and family friends like most of my peers do, I usually just stayed at home throughout the two- or three-day holiday. Of course this wasn’t a problem in itself, but when I went back to school the following day, people would be talking about what they did during the holidays, how many red packets they had received and perhaps more critical to teenagers like I was then, how much was the haul for the year. (Coming from a top secondary school when most people came from well-to-do families, the sums naturally were quite significant.)

Things have changed since he died about 8 years ago. We have renewed contact with the extended family, and I do join my relatives for CNY gatherings these days. I guess that restores some “normality” to my CNY’s.

Now that I think about it, missing out on CNY in the past have probably contributed to my reclusive nature.