REMINISCENCE OF CHINESE NEW YEAR

Unlike last year – where reunion parties were lavishly being held, this year – I didn’t join any of them. Chubby is on diet – so we didn’t have dinner. Over the weekend, I was at YCF’s house, just watching tv, yakked a bit, gossiped a bit, and also to exchange CNY gifts. This year, YCF gave us nga ku (some fried sliced vegetables, I think) and as for myself, I gave them a walnut cake, papaya, mandarin oranges and cashew nuts (Considering Chubby is on a diet). Chubby is giving us some fried stuffs too, trying to make us fat. I know she wanted so bad to win the bet! Anyway, I paid Chubby RM50 for her success of shedding 8 kgs to date! I have lost only 2 kgs over the past one week when I finally decided to go on a diet.

I went for last minute shopping at Jusco for the house with sister. Jusco was packed to the brim on weekends. Everyone’s cart surely has alcohol in it by the cartons. It was a joy to see everyone’s face lit up with beaming smiles. Everyone was indeed in new year’s mood.

Hair salons were also packed to the brim. Almost every lady customer with long hair, emerged from the salon with curly hair and copper shaded highlight. I heard Japanese perm is the in thing this year and so does the color copper. My short hair is also highlighted in copper.

Ever year, my brother would be the one sponsoring dried minced pork. Our all time favorite is always Brother Kiew’s. Sometimes, I also like Bee Cheng Hiang. Dried minced pork from other brands – well, I think is not as good as Brother Kiew’s. My sis told me – even her Thai colleagues would sometimes ask the visiting managers from Malaysia to bring them some dried minced pork – the one with the picture of a boxing rooster.

We still missed both our late grandmothers, even if they had passed on for 3 to 5 years now. No more fussing over the two old ladies, buying them some new clothes, telling them not to do too much housework, and watching tv together with them, sharing a joke over cups upon cups of kopi-O, the smell of my paternal grandmother’s rokok daun, which I sometimes helped to fold when I was a little girl, the small casing made of shells which hold my maternal grandmother’s bedak sejuk, which she religiously applied after she took her bath, getting ang pows from the two elderly in the family, the first thing in the morning.

When I was a child, I always liked to stay on in my grandma’s place in Taiping till the 9th day of Chinese New Year, where the Hokkiens would celebrate it auspiciously to commemorate the deed of the Jade Emperor. This is where the authentic and conservative Chinese customs are still being adhered to; long lines of red fire crackers that turn everyone deaf by midnight, lush stalks of sugar cane decorated every altar, pineapples decorated with red joss papers to signify wealth, a whole roast pork on a red elongated tray, children playing with bunga api and displaying their hidden talents by drawing graffiti on the concrete floor.

I would take every year as it comes and hope that my childhood memory of the New Lunar Year, would forever remain vivid in my mind. I am just afraid that, one day, we would not be able to witness these minute details anymore as time progresses, it erodes the simplicity of living. People spending more time at work, pursuing their dreams, sometimes, failing to take time off to observe what this festivity means to them.