Finally, the Chinese New Year mood has arrived.

The children in my neighbourhood are already making tentative attempts to set off mini fireworks in the evening. Their shrieks of laughter gladden one's heart, heralding yet another season of joy and rest.

Fire-crackers and fireworks used to be strictly banned during the New Year for security reasons. The ban was part of the legacy of our past when a State of Emergency was in place. I think those few declarations of State of Emergency ware never revoked, so technically we are still at war with the now non-existent terrorists. In any case, it was believed that the communists in the jungle could make ammunition out of the powder in the fire-crackers, so their importation, sale and distribution have since been strictly controlled.

Nowadays, the ban on fire-crackers and fireworks is still in place, for the purpose of protecting children from injuries caused by wayward explosions of those mini-bombs. I am ambivalent on the issue. I truly miss those early years when you could set off as many fire-crackers as your father could afford to buy. It was the essence of childhood joy.

An hour before 12 o'clock on New Year Eve, you could hear sporadic firing-offs of innumerable fire-crackers and fireworks, shooting into the city skyline all over, building into a deafening crescendo towards the bewitching mid-night hour, lighting up the sky with a kaleidoscopic canopy of shrieking darting dancing lights and sounds. The experience was one of sheer exhilaration.

Banned or not, fire-crackers and fireworks would still be set off on New Year Eve in cities and towns all over Malaysia this year. When so many citizens are breaking the law all at the same time, how can the poor policemen begin to arrest people? I think they just shut both their eyes and ears, and pray that our usually law-abiding citizens would exercise self-restraint.

A story I learned in primary school about the origin of the Chinese New Year goes something like this. The ancient Chinese farmers used to be terrorised by a monster called Nien, or "year". They triumphed over this threat to their existence by setting off the loud explosions that frightened away the monster. It is an allegoric myth with heavy symbolic meaning.

Lion dance

Loud noise is of the essence in Chinese New Year celebration. In this task, the fire-crackers are helped by lion dance troupes.

Like many significant features of the Chinese way of life, the lion dance too has a long history. It is hardly a dance in the ordinary sense of the word. Instead, it is steeped in religious and mythical traditions, and often practised by martial arts schools. There are intricate rules governing the dance and the behaviour of the players. Courtesy, skill and knowledge of the rituals are prized.

To laymen at least, the lion dance is all about an avalanche of noise emitting from the various drums, cymbals and gongs, what Malaysians of other races have come to know as "Tong Cheng". This cacophony of loud percussion accompanies the vigorous rhythmic stylised movement of the lion, and is interspersed with the even louder explosion of the fire-crackers.

In actual fact, it is the music that controls the movement of the dancers, and like a symphony that accompanies opera singers, sets the tone and background of a full length re-enactment of a mythical beast enjoying offering by human beings and blessing the household with good luck. For a traditional Chinese family, a Chinese New Year is never complete, unless they are visited by one of the many lion dance troupes around town.

Children look forward to the excitement that the New Year festivities can bring. As stoic Chinese parents would tell you, the New Year celebration is for the sake of the kids.

There is some truth in that declaration. For some parents, the financial burden of a New Year celebration can be considerable. There are one thousand and one expenses to be taken care of, so that a proper celebration can and will burn a big hole in their already over-stretched pocket.

Even then, adults also have a lot to celebrate in this their biggest festival of the year. Already, my Chinese friends are making preparation to go back to their home town for the traditional reunion dinner on New Year Eve. This is certainly the occasion to reaffirm their family and ethnic roots, which lies at the nucleus of their identity as Malaysian Chinese.

Common identity

Malaysian Chinese have done well, compared to the Chinese diaspora in many other parts of the world. It has never been easy. History and politics have stacked overwhelming odds against them. And yet they have persevered, relying on their traditional virtues of hard work, diligence, thrift, industry, innovativeness, and their social cohesion built upon a common identity.

The survival of that identity is heavily dependent on the maintenance and development of an almost complete system of education with the Chinese language as the main means of instruction. With little help from first the British colonial powers, and then the Umno-dominated government after independence, and fighting many official and unofficial attempts to erode their right to mother-tongue education in fact, they now finance and run three colleges, over 60 Chinese secondary schools, and 1,700 primary schools.

This is a fantastic feat. Nowhere else in the world outside China, Taiwan and Hong Kong can you find such success in this expensive business of running private Chinese educational institutions. For this, the Chinese people have paid dearly over the years. They call their massive financial contribution to the cause of their Chinese education their "second taxation".

The survival of the Chinese language gives them the post powerful depository through which they inherit and transmit their unique ethnic heritage. The language allows them to keep alive their religious and cultural practices. It is the most important element in their ethnic identity.

The Chinese schools feed and are fed in return by the survival of Chinese newspapers. As Anderson has observed, the print industry is the most important medium for an ethnic community to imagine their common ethnic bond. Nowhere is this observation truer than in Malaysia. With God-knows-how-many Chinese newspapers and magazines circulating throughout the length and breadth of this country, the survival of the identity of the Malaysian Chinese is assured for the moment at least.

Mass mobilisation via the press

Newspapers makes mass mobilisation possible. The Chinese newspapers form the platform on which the over five thousand or more Chinese guilds and associations have rallied for, and accumulated such bonding social capital that is the envy of other ethnic communities. This national communal network is also the backbone for the continued survival of their Chinese schools of all level.

More importantly, the newspapers have become the instrument for political mobilisation by all the Chinese and Chinese based political parties from both the ruling and opposition camps. As the cities and towns grow larger, and the size of constituencies grows, the only way a Chinese politician can reach his constituent is through the papers. Unfortunately, more than a few famous Chinese politicians have become creatures of the media, and their substance does not always match their fame.

A Japanese academic who studied the Malaysian Chinese all his life once told me that, as long as the Chinese have their schools, their guilds and associations, their newspapers and their political parties, they will always be spared the fate of being assimilated, as has been the case in Thailand and Indonesia.

Does it make them chauvinistic though? Would the insistence of maintaining their ethnic identity in their land of adoption means an obstacle in our Malaysian nation building?

This is where the Malaysian experience has been unique. Since the early years of independence, the Chinese people have always managed to make a distinction between ethnic and political identity. They may be Chinese by virtue of both ethnic origin and lineage of birth, but they have long sworn allegiance and loyalty to the Malaysian state. Perish the thought that they should want to move to China, Taiwan or Hong Kong, ever! They were born here, grown up here, and they are determined to die and be buried in their beloved country.

They may never get a job in the public sector, be put at a great advantage in admission to universities and colleges, and would seldom be given government contracts directly. Most of them probably harbour the quiet outrage that they have been treated as second class citizens in the land of their birth. The resentment runs really deep.

Great country, bad politics

There are those who cannot take it any more. They give up and move to greener pasture, not in China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan, but to developed Western nations. The great majority of our Chinese citizens, however, have chosen to remain. They will tell you that Malaysia is a great country with bad politics.

So despite all odds, they toil and limp in the private sector, accepting and defying at the same time their disadvantaged lot, and yet determined to make it on their own two feet, in the professions, in private business, in marketing and sales, in the service industry, and in all manners of trade. When the going gets really tough, they can always become street-side petty hawkers, and legends abound of the chicken-rice seller and the wanton-noodle peddlers retiring with a house and a car, and sending his children overseas to become doctors and lawyers.

Here their tenacity in their struggle for dignified survival in the face of adversity seems to have become their most valuable asset. They have shown that their human spirit is the most productive capital always.

The Chinese have worked hard all round the year, with many ignoring public holidays and weekends. They have fed and housed their families, educated their children, and in the process contributed tremendously to the nation's economic growth.

The Lunar New Year is the only time when all Chinese business activities come to a complete halt, except for the few odd coffee shops and restaurants. They deserve to celebrate their success with a vengeance.

Above all, they more than deserve their well-earned rest, to rejoice in their family, to recharge their battery, to renew their faith in life, to pray for good fortune, and to be ready for another round of battle for survival in the next lunar year.

Happy Chinese New Year!