Feb 18, 2010
What Chinese New Year means to me
By Zuraidah Ibrahim, Associate Editor
IT IS Chinese New Year and I am feeling nostalgic. Yes, I know I am
Malay. This year, though, I bought kumquats and hung Chinese couplets on
a wall. On New Year's Eve, we came home late after dinner and heard the
clatter of mahjong tiles. I felt strangely comforted knowing that the
traditions I remember from childhood are still practised today.
My father is the reason I have been reminiscing about Chinese New Years
past. He had Chinese friends, some of them rich businessmen, and others
country bumpkins. They walked into our lives because they could hardly
speak or write English and they needed my father's help to write letters
and other documents for various official or legal purposes. Some were
clients of the law firm at Winchester House downtown where my father
worked as a legal clerk. By visiting our house, they avoided Shenton Way
prices.
My father would type away on his trusty Olivetti while the Chinese men
hung about drinking black coffee. Most conversed in bazaar Malay but a
few could speak only dialect and so they had relatives or friends in tow
as translators. We would see some of them for weeks before they
disappeared, never to appear in our lives again. But there were others
who maintained ties with my father over the years because of assorted
legal wrangles. They were the ones who made Chinese New Year come alive
for my siblings and me.
I remember a Mr Lee, a small, bald man with a wide smile who ran a
concessions store at Roxy cinema in Katong. This was in the early 1970s.
He was grateful for my father's help and visited our house every New
Year, bearing oranges and packets of nuts and snacks from his store. He
also gave us hongbao, causing an outburst of joy. My older brothers, who
ordinarily would not give me the time of day, were suddenly brimming
with offers to help me spend my newfound wealth.
Mr Lee also gave us bags of firecrackers, which my brothers would set
off almost the minute he left. They were fun, but no match for the
bamboo poles of firecrackers that shopkeepers in my neighbourhood showed
off in the evening. Our street was called Jalan Lapang, or Clear Street,
but on the eve of New Year, it was anything but that. Loud pops and
crackles filled the air, kids would be out in their pyjamas, some in
awe, others limp with fear as they hid behind older relatives. After the
ban on firecrackers in 1972, our street never had these shows of light
and sound.
The next day, you could hear the gambling in neighbours' houses. Our
neighbour on the left celebrated Christmas and Chinese New Year with
equal gusto and we would receive plates of tarts and kueh bangkit from
them twice a year. On each occasion, my mother would be assured that
they used pots and pans reserved strictly for cookies, not meats.
Then there was Baba Tan, a rich elderly Peranakan who bought kueh from
my grandmother's stall on the street outside our home and hung about
with other patrons. He was the first person I heard say 'Tuan Allah',
except he said 'Ala', for his Hokkien-inflected Malay could not wrestle
with the double L in the Arabic word. He would also give me hongbao,
sometimes twice, because he was forgetful.
The best part of the New Year would be the visiting with my father. I
remember going to the houses of two men in particular, Yam Peng and Mr
Tan, somewhere in Siglap. Both were businessmen whose fortunes seesawed
over the decades. Yam Peng died a few years ago, his real fortune a
large extended family that mourned him.
One visit to Mr Tan's house was memorable. His New Year gatherings were
lavish and, sometime in the afternoon, a troupe of lion dancers appeared
at his front gate, cymbals crashing, drums thumping. The lions looked
very menacing and the sounds were just too much. I ran and hid between
the fridge and a cabinet counter in the kitchen.
But fear gripped me again as I turned to look at the counter. A bowl of
blackened sauce and chunks of what must have been pork stood inches
away. So deeply ingrained - even at that young age - was my aversion to
pork, I felt sure I was going to faint.
But children are resilient, and soon I was back playing and tucking into
loveletters. I left patting my pocket full of hongbao. The horror of
leaping lions and stewed pork was forgotten.
My father embodied what it meant to be colour-blind. He had friends from
all stations in life and of all races. His friends accepted him for what
he was and he them. Questions of religion did not quite enter the
picture and when they did, they were elided with grace or accepted with
common sense. Some say the reason the older generation was more
accepting of difference was because people were not very particular then
about their religious practices. Yet I recall that Muslims were strict
about their food even then. At Mr Tan's, a Muslim cook would bring in
the Muslim meals with minimum fuss.
Perhaps it was easier for my father's generation to forge friendships
across racial lines because class distinctions were less apparent then.
People lived in more mixed housing. The street I grew up in had
bungalows as well as kampung houses. The kampung we moved into later had
bungalows and even two tiny blocks of low-rise flats. The middle and
upper classes were not ensconced in their private enclaves. They had to
go out beyond their charmed circle in their daily interactions and for
business.
Back then, you never knew who you could end up being friends with.
This essay appeared as a straitstimes.com blog on Tuesday.
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