Chinese New Year nostalgia
Sim Kwang YangPublished: Jan 22, 2005 12:18 PM | Updated: Jan 29, 2008 6:21 PM
There is very little festive mood in the air, even though Chinese New Year is a mere fortnight away. This absence of excited anticipation is itself indicative of the vast changes that have engulfed the Chinese community in Malaysia.
The Lunar New Year has always been celebrated by the Chinese people for millennia as the most auspicious festival on their annual calendar. It is probably still so in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and among the Chinese global diaspora.
When I was a child growing up not long after the war ended, it was certainly the occasion to which all children looked forward with great excitement, counting the days a month in advance.
Few people could afford to live in individual terrace or semi-detached houses then. My family used to rent a small room in a rickety double-storey wooden structure that housed 18 tenant families in all. The monthly rental was something like five dollars a month. Even when we moved to a tiny city council flat later, there were still 56 families sharing a whole block with three lifts permanently reeking with the stench of urine.
Living at such close quarters, you are inevitably infected with the general festive mood long before the arrival of the New Year day. For weeks on end, noisy cheery New Year music would be blasting from the cheap radios at all corners of the neighbourhood. Transistors were not in vogue yet, and those radios had large valves emitting light and heat. In the absence of television, these radios were the only mode of heralding in the happy air of another season of great rejoicing.
There were no Coca Cola and F&N then. Most of us were more than happy to see the wooden crates packed with those small aerated drinks of different flavours and colours, the manufacturers of which had since long gone bust.
There is very little festive mood in the air, even though Chinese New Year is a mere fortnight away. This absence of excited anticipation is itself indicative of the vast changes that have engulfed the Chinese community in Malaysia.
The Lunar New Year has always been celebrated by the Chinese people for millennia as the most auspicious festival on their annual calendar. It is probably still so in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and among the Chinese global diaspora.
When I was a child growing up not long after the war ended, it was certainly the occasion to which all children looked forward with great excitement, counting the days a month in advance.
Few people could afford to live in individual terrace or semi-detached houses then. My family used to rent a small room in a rickety double-storey wooden structure that housed 18 tenant families in all. The monthly rental was something like five dollars a month. Even when we moved to a tiny city council flat later, there were still 56 families sharing a whole block with three lifts permanently reeking with the stench of urine.
Living at such close quarters, you are inevitably infected with the general festive mood long before the arrival of the New Year day. For weeks on end, noisy cheery New Year music would be blasting from the cheap radios at all corners of the neighbourhood. Transistors were not in vogue yet, and those radios had large valves emitting light and heat. In the absence of television, these radios were the only mode of heralding in the happy air of another season of great rejoicing.
The neighbourhood was a thriving community then, where people helped one another and formed very close life-long friendship. During those times when everyone lived in great hardship, mutual assistance was offered and taken without much ceremony, but with gratitude and appreciation that cemented the bond for decades.
With sharing as a way of life, neighbours would get together to make New Year cakes and biscuits of all shapes and sizes, to share the costs, and to enjoy the spirit of camaraderie. The women would knead the flour and, using different but simple implements, tease it into different sizes and shapes. Baking was done over charcoal fire, and the finished products would be packed in empty Milo tins, with a piece of red paper inserted between the lid and the tin, to keep the delicacy air-tight.
Skilled seamstresses
My most vivid memories of Chinese New Years past evoke the images of these staunch and stoic housewives, each burdened with many children, and sometimes with an abusive husband, sweating and labouring before the charcoal fire, while they exchanged gossip and imparted folk wisdom among themselves. Most of them were not well-educated.
Unlike many modern-day ladies, these women were all skilled seamstresses. They had to be, for there was never enough disposable income to shop for clothes for all their children. They were ingenious when it came to making the best New Year clothes in the greatest quantity from the least and cheapest materials available. If they were indeed too many children (one neighbour had 12 children), the elder children had to go without. We all learned early to make sacrifices for the happiness of loved ones.
New Year was special because that was often the only occasion when children would ever get new clothes.
As the New Year Day neared, the whole community would be organised for the spring cleaning. All the men, women and children would be mobilised, dusting, sweeping, washing, scrubbing, painting, first in the shared public areas, and then in each individual households.
Special provision had to be ordered from the neighbourhood grocery shop, even on credit, as long as you settled part of the old debt before the New Year Eve. Most of my neighbours then were eternally indebted to the grocer. But no matter how hard up you were, the New Year had to be celebrated, and so drinks and special food items for the occasion had to be ordered and delivered on a tricycle.
There were no Coca Cola and F&N then. Most of us were more than happy to see the wooden crates packed with those small aerated drinks of different flavours and colours, the manufacturers of which had since long gone bust. These would be arranged on a table in attractive rows, behind the plates full of mandarin oranges, watermelon seeds, and sweets. Children were warned against touching these goodies - on pains of death - before the New Year Day arrived. Even then, they were reserved mainly for guests only.
The frenzy of festive preparation picked up tempo with the New Year decoration. The prized table cloth and the curtains, usually of red or such cheerful colours would be dug out from under the drawers, thoroughly cleaned and then properly used to give the humble room an aura of hope and happiness.
Red paper tablets with auspicious calligraphy, designs and pictures were everywhere, on the wall, hung from ceilings, on both sides of, and across the top of the main door, calling for divine blessings, announcing the arrival of spring, and aspiring to wealth, luck and happiness.
A day or two right up to New Year Eve, the housewives would plunge their arms in big pails of water for hours on end, cleaning and preparing the various meats, fish and vegetables for the big feast.
Meal of the year
It was a time when parents had to dig deep into their meagre pockets to makes sure that a New Year Eve family reunion dinner would be the best meal of the year. For the poorest families like mine, a chicken and a duck would be the minimum requirement. Children looked forward to New Year precisely because of the prospect of sumptuous overflowing food, on which they could gorge themselves sick without reprimand from their parents. At other time of the year, rich meat was hardly a daily item on the menu.
There was another purpose of preparing the best food possible for this all-important celebration.
The Chinese New Year was also an annual turning point in the eternal cycle of life. It marked the change of seasons, a period of reprieve between harvest and replanting, and a time to settle all debts and forgive past hurt, a reunion for family members to renew ancient filial bonds.
There was also this under-current of sobering reflection in the midst of feasting and merry-making. No doubt the past year had been tough for everyone, but people had survived mostly unscathed. Children were now one year older, firmly on the path to a healthy future ahead. Old people were getting on in years, but they were still around, to impart their love, care, and wisdom to the very young, and traditions were still thriving in the extended family. The elders were respected, honoured, and cherished, especially on this festive occasion.
Life had been relentlessly hard, but it would always be so. But one can always embrace the next year with hope, for as long as hope burned eternal in the breasts of men and women, life had a purpose. The Lunar New year celebration was about renewal of, and recommitment to this hope and optimism, that the future year would always hold other possibilities that defined man's humanity.
For this, the adults were thankful. The best food dishes, and flowers where available, must be offered to the family altar in honour of their watchful ancestors. The deities in charge of the neighbourhood compound, the stove, and other places around the house must be worshipped, appeased and honoured in appreciation for the blessings of peace and prosperity in the past year. The prayers that went up to the sky together with the incense smoke would humbly appeal for better fortune in the year to come.
When finally the evening for the reunion dinner began, everyone was filled to the brim with a sense of warmth and satisfaction. For the next 15 days, parents would not scold their children, the floor would not be swept, and all harsh words were to be banished from the house at all costs. It was a period of truce, between human beings and the heaven and earth, as well as with other human beings. Peace and harmony must reign.
Diluted rejoice
Looking back to those bad old days now, nearly half a century later, I cannot help but feel a sense of nostalgia.
Those family friends and old neighbours who shared my hard lot in life had all moved on to all corners of the earth. Their children and grandchildren have all prospered and joined the burgeoning Malaysia middle-class, all owning houses and cars in the suburbs of various towns and cities.
The story of my old neighbourhood must have been duplicated many times all over Malaysia. The Chinese people have come a long way. Despite bad politics, the Chinese people have prospered and thrived for the most part, generally speaking. Those early days of poverty and deprivation are gone forever for most. There should be cause for great rejoicing and deep appreciation for their good fortune.
Paradoxically though, the air of rejoicing has been steadily diluted over the past years. People living in affluent suburban homes do not speak to their next-door neighbours. The idea of a community spirit in a neighbourhood is all but dead. The extended family has disappeared, and cousins hardly know one another. Some old people would be particularly lonely this year.
For those who are bent on celebrating Chinese New Year, all cleaning and decorations can be done by hired hands. All food and clothes could be bought readily from the hypermarkets and the departmental stores. All you have to do is to spend money. Much of the religious connotation of the New Year is now cast away as old superstition.
The children would still be thrilled of course. But then, now that there are fewer children in your average middle-class Chinese family, they tend to be loved and pampered rotten throughout the year. For many Chinese children, every day in the year is a Chinese New Year Day.
Generally, Chinese parents live and work for the happiness of their children, and would never want them to suffer the kind of hardship that oppressed the older generations. In the end, children may grow up lacking training in persevering through bad times. Why, they may not even appreciate their good fortune.
In fact, some families I know are already making travel plans. The long Chinese New Year break is just another long holiday season for them. Many get tired with open house and visiting friends, which have seemed to lose their meaning somehow. They have all worked hard all year, so it seems a good idea to take this opportunity to go as far away as possible and just rest easy.
Perhaps many of my Chinese friends have become victims of their success in their struggle for survival. Their prosperity and well-being, which their forbears prayed for in earlier times of great hardship, have been achieved at the cost of losing many of the fine traditions associated with the New Year, and with being Chinese.
Is good fortune to be prayed for, or is it a curse in disguise?
The Lunar New Year has always been celebrated by the Chinese people for millennia as the most auspicious festival on their annual calendar. It is probably still so in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and among the Chinese global diaspora.
When I was a child growing up not long after the war ended, it was certainly the occasion to which all children looked forward with great excitement, counting the days a month in advance.
Few people could afford to live in individual terrace or semi-detached houses then. My family used to rent a small room in a rickety double-storey wooden structure that housed 18 tenant families in all. The monthly rental was something like five dollars a month. Even when we moved to a tiny city council flat later, there were still 56 families sharing a whole block with three lifts permanently reeking with the stench of urine.
Living at such close quarters, you are inevitably infected with the general festive mood long before the arrival of the New Year day. For weeks on end, noisy cheery New Year music would be blasting from the cheap radios at all corners of the neighbourhood. Transistors were not in vogue yet, and those radios had large valves emitting light and heat. In the absence of television, these radios were the only mode of heralding in the happy air of another season of great rejoicing.
The neighbourhood was a thriving community then, where people helped one another and formed very close life-long friendship. During those times when everyone lived in great hardship, mutual assistance was offered and taken without much ceremony, but with gratitude and appreciation that cemented the bond for decades.
With sharing as a way of life, neighbours would get together to make New Year cakes and biscuits of all shapes and sizes, to share the costs, and to enjoy the spirit of camaraderie. The women would knead the flour and, using different but simple implements, tease it into different sizes and shapes. Baking was done over charcoal fire, and the finished products would be packed in empty Milo tins, with a piece of red paper inserted between the lid and the tin, to keep the delicacy air-tight.
Skilled seamstresses
My most vivid memories of Chinese New Years past evoke the images of these staunch and stoic housewives, each burdened with many children, and sometimes with an abusive husband, sweating and labouring before the charcoal fire, while they exchanged gossip and imparted folk wisdom among themselves. Most of them were not well-educated.
Unlike many modern-day ladies, these women were all skilled seamstresses. They had to be, for there was never enough disposable income to shop for clothes for all their children. They were ingenious when it came to making the best New Year clothes in the greatest quantity from the least and cheapest materials available. If they were indeed too many children (one neighbour had 12 children), the elder children had to go without. We all learned early to make sacrifices for the happiness of loved ones.
New Year was special because that was often the only occasion when children would ever get new clothes.
As the New Year Day neared, the whole community would be organised for the spring cleaning. All the men, women and children would be mobilised, dusting, sweeping, washing, scrubbing, painting, first in the shared public areas, and then in each individual households.
Special provision had to be ordered from the neighbourhood grocery shop, even on credit, as long as you settled part of the old debt before the New Year Eve. Most of my neighbours then were eternally indebted to the grocer. But no matter how hard up you were, the New Year had to be celebrated, and so drinks and special food items for the occasion had to be ordered and delivered on a tricycle.
There were no Coca Cola and F&N then. Most of us were more than happy to see the wooden crates packed with those small aerated drinks of different flavours and colours, the manufacturers of which had since long gone bust. These would be arranged on a table in attractive rows, behind the plates full of mandarin oranges, watermelon seeds, and sweets. Children were warned against touching these goodies - on pains of death - before the New Year Day arrived. Even then, they were reserved mainly for guests only.
The frenzy of festive preparation picked up tempo with the New Year decoration. The prized table cloth and the curtains, usually of red or such cheerful colours would be dug out from under the drawers, thoroughly cleaned and then properly used to give the humble room an aura of hope and happiness.
Red paper tablets with auspicious calligraphy, designs and pictures were everywhere, on the wall, hung from ceilings, on both sides of, and across the top of the main door, calling for divine blessings, announcing the arrival of spring, and aspiring to wealth, luck and happiness.
A day or two right up to New Year Eve, the housewives would plunge their arms in big pails of water for hours on end, cleaning and preparing the various meats, fish and vegetables for the big feast.
Meal of the year
It was a time when parents had to dig deep into their meagre pockets to makes sure that a New Year Eve family reunion dinner would be the best meal of the year. For the poorest families like mine, a chicken and a duck would be the minimum requirement. Children looked forward to New Year precisely because of the prospect of sumptuous overflowing food, on which they could gorge themselves sick without reprimand from their parents. At other time of the year, rich meat was hardly a daily item on the menu.
There was another purpose of preparing the best food possible for this all-important celebration.
The Chinese New Year was also an annual turning point in the eternal cycle of life. It marked the change of seasons, a period of reprieve between harvest and replanting, and a time to settle all debts and forgive past hurt, a reunion for family members to renew ancient filial bonds.
There was also this under-current of sobering reflection in the midst of feasting and merry-making. No doubt the past year had been tough for everyone, but people had survived mostly unscathed. Children were now one year older, firmly on the path to a healthy future ahead. Old people were getting on in years, but they were still around, to impart their love, care, and wisdom to the very young, and traditions were still thriving in the extended family. The elders were respected, honoured, and cherished, especially on this festive occasion.
Life had been relentlessly hard, but it would always be so. But one can always embrace the next year with hope, for as long as hope burned eternal in the breasts of men and women, life had a purpose. The Lunar New year celebration was about renewal of, and recommitment to this hope and optimism, that the future year would always hold other possibilities that defined man's humanity.
For this, the adults were thankful. The best food dishes, and flowers where available, must be offered to the family altar in honour of their watchful ancestors. The deities in charge of the neighbourhood compound, the stove, and other places around the house must be worshipped, appeased and honoured in appreciation for the blessings of peace and prosperity in the past year. The prayers that went up to the sky together with the incense smoke would humbly appeal for better fortune in the year to come.
When finally the evening for the reunion dinner began, everyone was filled to the brim with a sense of warmth and satisfaction. For the next 15 days, parents would not scold their children, the floor would not be swept, and all harsh words were to be banished from the house at all costs. It was a period of truce, between human beings and the heaven and earth, as well as with other human beings. Peace and harmony must reign.
Diluted rejoice
Looking back to those bad old days now, nearly half a century later, I cannot help but feel a sense of nostalgia.
Those family friends and old neighbours who shared my hard lot in life had all moved on to all corners of the earth. Their children and grandchildren have all prospered and joined the burgeoning Malaysia middle-class, all owning houses and cars in the suburbs of various towns and cities.
The story of my old neighbourhood must have been duplicated many times all over Malaysia. The Chinese people have come a long way. Despite bad politics, the Chinese people have prospered and thrived for the most part, generally speaking. Those early days of poverty and deprivation are gone forever for most. There should be cause for great rejoicing and deep appreciation for their good fortune.
Paradoxically though, the air of rejoicing has been steadily diluted over the past years. People living in affluent suburban homes do not speak to their next-door neighbours. The idea of a community spirit in a neighbourhood is all but dead. The extended family has disappeared, and cousins hardly know one another. Some old people would be particularly lonely this year.
For those who are bent on celebrating Chinese New Year, all cleaning and decorations can be done by hired hands. All food and clothes could be bought readily from the hypermarkets and the departmental stores. All you have to do is to spend money. Much of the religious connotation of the New Year is now cast away as old superstition.
The children would still be thrilled of course. But then, now that there are fewer children in your average middle-class Chinese family, they tend to be loved and pampered rotten throughout the year. For many Chinese children, every day in the year is a Chinese New Year Day.
Generally, Chinese parents live and work for the happiness of their children, and would never want them to suffer the kind of hardship that oppressed the older generations. In the end, children may grow up lacking training in persevering through bad times. Why, they may not even appreciate their good fortune.
In fact, some families I know are already making travel plans. The long Chinese New Year break is just another long holiday season for them. Many get tired with open house and visiting friends, which have seemed to lose their meaning somehow. They have all worked hard all year, so it seems a good idea to take this opportunity to go as far away as possible and just rest easy.
Perhaps many of my Chinese friends have become victims of their success in their struggle for survival. Their prosperity and well-being, which their forbears prayed for in earlier times of great hardship, have been achieved at the cost of losing many of the fine traditions associated with the New Year, and with being Chinese.
Is good fortune to be prayed for, or is it a curse in disguise?
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