MEANINGFUL TRADITIONS OF THE LUNAR NEW YEAR

The thing about festive celebrations is you basically want them to go on and on. It is not only about the onset of the festival but the days or months leading up to it.

For us who live faraway, we start booking flight, bus or train tickets  home at the earliest date possible. I remember when I was studying in Kuala Lumpur, I would rush to the bus station to secure coach tickets once the counters were open. There was no on-line booking then.

I had to buy several tickets for all the short journeys that would eventually take me back to my hometown in Batu Pahat because the direct-link bus tickets were all sold out. There was no griping or complaining because the heart and the head were all in unison with the idea of going home, however long it took.

Certain areas like Petaling Street or Chinatown would be a buzzed about the festival. I used to make a few trips there just to feel the atmosphere, smell the roasted chestnuts and to listen to the Chinese new year songs being blared from the loud speakers. I haven’t been to Petaling Street for some time now and I wonder if it is still the same?

Today is the fourth day of the Chinese New Year and there are 11 more days of celebration to go. To the child that is sheer happiness and although I am a child no longer, I still feel a strange sort of excitement this time of the year.

Like any Malaysian, I am preoccupied with food. I enjoy eating and the adventures associated with the preparation of food or the searching for eating joints that serve mouth watering food. In fact, any dish that is well cooked and garnished bids to be photographed. So I have picture albums dedicated to food alone or to people sitting round a table laden with food. It is not unusual to see me cooking any time of the day or night.

Three types of delicacies that I enjoy which are synonymous to the Chinese New Year festival are yee sang (vegetable and fish salad),  ningko (sticky glutinous rice cake) and mandarin oranges.

Since I belong to the Teochew clan, I’m proud to say that yee sang is a Teochew-style raw fish salad which consists of raw fish and shredded vegetables. Eating yee sang is a cultural activity where all diners at the table stand up and on cue, proceed to toss the shredded ingredients into the air with chopsticks while voicing out auspicious wishes. The higher the tossing, the greater the diner’s increase in abundance and fortune.

Next on the list is ningko or the sticky glutinous rice cake. I love it steamed and rolled in coconut or sandwiched between slices of yam and sweet potato and fried in batter. The story behind the sticky glutinous rice cake is one of human’s cunning. This sticky sweet snack is believed to be an offering to the Kitchen God, so that he can't badmouth the human family in front of the Jade Emperor as his mouth will be stuck with the sticky cake.

Then there are the mandarin oranges that are considered traditional symbols of abundance and good fortune.

When we waddle away after a good meal with family and friends, I believe there is a great release of endorphins. It could be because the meal was gastronomically satisfying or because of the company that we were with.  Or better still, it could be a combination of both. Scientists have named it ingestion analgesia which is the good feeling after eating.

Finally, Chinese New Year may last for 15 days but the wonderful thing is, it comes around every year. There are 12 zodiac animals in the Chinese tradition and each zodiac animal appears once every 12 years., 2015 being the year of the goat.

           

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY NEW STRAITS TIMES 22/2/2015 :
http://digital.nstp.com.my/nst/books/150222nstnews/index.html#/18/

WE WERE ALL YOUNG ONCE

The first television set that my parents bought was a 17 inch black and white with antennae that we called rabbit ears. Most days reception was excellent but just when my favourite movies like The Brady Bunch (sitcom) and The Virginian (western) were on, the screen, as if it had a personal vendetta, would go fuzzy.

When football matches with Soh Chin Aun  alongside the late Mokhtar Dahari and R. Arumugam were on, I would see stripes on the television screen instead of the football field - vertical stripes that became diagonal stripes depending on where the wind blew. And I would soldier on, glued to the idiot box, praying for a miracle to happen.

Indeed those were the days when we had simple faith and entertainment was very, very basic.

Nowadays, with so many channels to choose from, we can literally sit and flick the remote control to find one that suits. It was in this manner one evening, that I chanced upon ‘Reeling in the Years’ on Sky Arts and the featured band was The Hollies from Manchester with ‘He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother’.

A name as archaic as the hills now, but during my teenage years, they were the bee's knees, at least to me anyway. I remember wishing for the Hollies to stage a concert at Stadium Negara and how I would save up to go see them if they ever came. But only after overcoming the initial hurdle – my parents. Like most parents at that time, pop bands from the West were all wild and a bad influence for their daughters.

I had posters of my favourite bands, poster boys like David Cassidy, advertisements of Wrangler and Texwood jeans all plastered on the walls of my room. Sometimes when no one was looking, I would even kiss the paper images and imagine myself being the girlfriend of one of them.

Deep down, many of us wanted to marry a Westerner.

Somehow Westerners seemed to be more handsome, more understanding and more romantic. After all the westerners that we were exposed to were mainly Hollywood or British stars at their best so the local boys down the street pale in contrast.

We would also sing the songs, having memorised every word. If my parents were within ear shot I would just hum those parts that had references to love or sex just in case they might understand those words although they spoke no English. The words in question of course were very mild and innocent compared to the outright and crude lyrics of some of  today’s pop songs.

We would imitate the way our pop idols look. For the boys, polo neck sweaters and bell-bottom trousers and long hair. 

For the girls, bob or curly hairstyle and mini skirts and jeans. I was one of the earliest to wear jeans in my town and after receiving a fair share of wolf whistles from total strangers, my parents deemed it was improper for a girl to wear jeans. There was a family conference with my mum threatening to cut the jeans and my dad wanting to keep them away from me forever. There were lots of protests and tears from the angry teen who thought life was not fair at all.

I never saw the jeans again until about five years later when almost every girl was wearing jeans in the town. By then jeans were a thing of the past and being a trend setter, I had moved on to something else.

With Valentine’s day around the corner, I am reminded of another event.

Just like old songs, a certain fragrance can also evoke a gamut of memories. It was also during that era that ‘Brut’ a line of men's grooming and fragrance products first launched in 1964 by Fabergé was the fragrance that men identified by.

I had my first valentine card when I was 13. The card measured 14 inches by 10 inches and was hand made by a student studying art in Toronto. Inside the card was a small piece of tissue soaked in Brut. I kept the tissue under my pillow for a very long time.

Such is the beauty of memories.

We were young once.


THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY NEW STRAITS TIMES 8/2/2015 :

http://digital.nstp.com.my/nst/books/150208nstnews/index.html#/21/