THE GOOD OLD CHINESE NEW YEAR

Year of the Rooster

The year of Rooster is here.

Dang. How time flies.

It is rather sad this year because of not having my beloved grandmother to celebrate with. She passed on at the end of year 2003 at a ripe old age of 84. The other grandmother passed on in year 2001. We have not been celebrating much, due to the passing of the two oldest persons in our family.

When I was little, I eagerly anticipate Chinese New Year every year. Besides the angpow, I longed to see my cousins again in Penang. We played all sorts of things, playing masak-masak (cooking with real fire and ingredients), catching butterflies, fishing, had splashing time in the small waterfall, bumpy rides into the rubber plantation/forest on the old rickety bicycles, watching the piglets suckled at their mother’s breasts in the sty, etc. I am a village pumpkin and I love every bit of it. My aunt said, one day, as we grow older, we would dread going to Balik Pulau, Penang.

She was right.

The forest and plantation are gone. Since it was a squatter area, the owner of the estate had sold the entire plantation for a profit for development which somewhat did not materialized. My aunt had since shifted to a new urban place. Most of my cousins are married with children now. With the passing of both of my grandmothers, it somewhat becoming less important for me to go visit my relatives in Penang and Taiping. The topics for conversation are getting limited and restricted to work and their family lives,… there isn’t much left to talk about.

There isn’t much to look forward to now for the Chinese New Year. It is all eat, eat, eat and watch the endless irritating Chinese New Year song dedications on tv.

There are more things that I missed about my childhood’s Chinese New Year…

(1) The competition to greet my parents, grandmother, aunts and uncles first in the morning.
(2) The scrumptious lunch of my aunt’s famous fried chicken with lime and soy sauce.
(3) The excitement of tearing off angpows and comparing with siblings on how much we are getting.
(4) The carefree-ness of playing with fire crackers to our hearts’ content.
(5) The agony of holding my pee in the night as the toilet was stationed a few metres outside my late grandma’s house (it is scary to walk there in the middle of the night with no street lights and holding only torch lights or oil lamps).
(6) Taking a bath in mountain cold water with fishes swimming in the bath tub.
(7) Collecting rubber tree’s seeds

and more…

Don’t we all wish we never grow up?

Here’s wishing you Gong Xi Fa Cai. May the year of Rooster brings you much happiness, good health and abundant wealth.

Click this for a cool MTV link: http://flash.sparkyblue.com/mtv/set02/p03.htm