Chinese New Year in 2024
This article is my response to a friendly prompt from the medium writer support. It sets me into thinking how celebrating Chinese New Year has changed over the years and what it means to me. So let me tell you my story of how I celebrate Chinese New Year from my childhood to the coming new year as a Singaporean Chinese.
I was born in the mid 60’s. In those years, most of us are still living in community style residences. My parents and my siblings (5 of us) were staying with my grandparents in the same house. Before we were born, my uncles and aunties (my father’s brothers and sisters) have already been staying at the same place. By the time we were around, my uncles and aunties have moved out and have families of their own. My father was the eldest son and so we were the ones staying with our grandparents. At that young age, I did not know the pro’s and con’s of staying with our grandparents. But Chinese New Year has always been centred around them. We would have a big Lunar New Year Eve reunion dinner, where all my uncles and their families would gather for a big feast (two aunties of mine would not join us but they would join their husbands’ families instead). Lots of great food would be served and these were prepared by my mother, grandmother and my uncle’s wives. After dinner, the children would play games or watch TV (live broadcast program for Chinese New Year celerbrations) while the adults would gather and help in the cleaning and washing. Once all that was done, we would have the ang pow time. All the married elders would give ang pows (red packets with cash as gift) to the unmarried ones (mostly children but also including the young adults). This would be my happiest moment every year because it meant that I could buy some new toys.
One of the interesting activities we would do to celebrate was to set off fire crackers. This has been a tradition to bid farewell to bad times and to welcome the good fortune ahead. Unfortunately, it has been banned in Singapore since March 1972 after a serious injury was inflicted on policeman.
(Source : Photo by Tzvi Kilov on Unsplash)
Now, only a small little cracker is allowed, for symbolic reasons.
The next two days (and usually up to fifth or seventh; in China, celebration will last two weeks), there will be guests coming to visit us (more so for my grandparents and parents). Lots of snacks will be available to entertain the guests. There are many types and every household will prepare a wide variety for their guests.
The most popular among the snacks is the pineapple tarts.
Pineapple in Chinese (Hokkien, a dialect of the Chinese spoken language from Fujian province) sounds the same as “Prosperity is Coming”. Most people love it for its sour, sweet and buttery taste.
Among all the snacks and candies, my favourite was the nian gao (年糕 ), which means sticky (glutinous rice) cake. My mother will always cook sliced nian gao fried with eggs for breakfast on the first day of the new year.
The nian gao above is enclosed in banana leaves and the red sticker on it represents sudden wealth (like winning a lottery). But it is the nian gao name that is most meaningful: Rise Higher Every Year. And for kids, eating nian gao is supposed to help them grow taller each year.
As we grew older, we gotten bigger in size and we could no longer stay in the same house with my grandparents. So, we moved out and have our own apartment. Then when Chinese New Year comes, we would join all my uncles and celebrate at my grandparents place again. This however did not last long as soon, both my grandparents passed away, and a new way of celebrating Chinese New Year sets in. My parents generation now celebrate Chinese New Year in their own individual families. We have our own family reunion dinner. My father has passed away early and our celebration is led by my mother. Though the size of reunion has become smaller, the key ingredients are still there, great food, ang pow, watching TV for the live Chinese New Year celebration broadcast, and the catchup’s among my siblings. And since I’ve grown big enough, I need to help out; I often helped to clean the toilet and wash the kitchen floor. This is the spring cleaning that is often done before Chinese New Year. Most families would start the cleaning weeks before. But since our apartment is still small, we mostly spent the day before the new year starts to clean the house. After the cleaning, then it’s time to put on decorations in the house.
We will stick many of these verses of well wishes everywhere in the house.
After a few years, this also evolved as my older brothers have gotten married and the reunion dinner size increased with the addition of sister-in-law’s and later nephews and nieces. The celebration still centred around my mother (though she has stopped being the main one preparing the food). Usually we would have potluck for the reunion dinner where each of us would contribute some great dishes. It is around this time that I also join the bandwagon of the married couples. I now need to give out ang pow’s. This is double whammy as I now would not get any ang pow and have to give out ang pow. Soon, of course, we start to have babies and we now could recover some ang pow’s for my kids.
After my mother passed away, we also started to split our Chinese New Year celebrations within each sibling families. I started to organize Chinese New Year celebration and preparation for my own family of four. It is up to me and my wife to decide what traditional practices to continue for our little family. At first, I was thinking of minimizing the effort as we often end up wasting food and organizing few guest visits. It then occurred to me the traditions of Chinese New Year is really about giving and taking. We celebrate Chinese New Year as the beginning of a new season of giving and taking. Many traditional practices and festive food reminds us of the recent past and the new beginning for spring. The cycle of spring knits the family together and the same practices help to knit generations together. We bid farewell to the older generation and welcome new generation in the same way we bid farewell to the past year and welcome the new spring. The traditions have stood the test of time from many generations before me, and I would want to pass them to my future generations.
I hope this article helps you to appreciate the Chinese New Year celebrations. And here’s my Chinese New Year greetings for 2024:
Wish you all a prosperous Chinese New Year with the blessing of the God of Fortune carrying my favourite Common Kingfisher to catch many fishes every year, which in Chinese is 年年有余, meaning to have surplus every year. The word 余 rhymes with 鱼, which is the word for fish.
PS: I have published other articles on birds. Do check them up if you like the above picture: https://medium.com/@jangthye/my-bird-photos-of-2023-550bbbbba49a, https://medium.com/@jangthye/my-trip-to-bird-paradise-67c48a5ac363, https://medium.com/@jangthye/my-bird-photos-of-2022-2e1808979c70, https://medium.com/@jangthye/how-i-become-a-bird-photographer-634c11c517ba
