Since my mom and wife are Chinese, it is not surprising that I truly enjoy Chinese New Year. I am also very aware of the Chinese astrology and this year marks the beginning of the year of the Ox. Those who are aged in multiple of 12 will share the same zodiac year but that doesn't mean that this year is always made for you. For me, I get to enjoy the superstitious input about the Chinese Zodiac while putting my trust in the Big Guy upstairs. So how do I spend CNY?
Well, for me the excitement starts when you start shopping for different products for your family members. It is customary for you to have gifts, like mandarin oranges, mushrooms, abalone, fruit cans, Chinese sausages, etc when you visit your family or friends during CNY. Of course it is not limited to these and it is really up to your budget and of course the people you are buying for.
For us, we will make a list of family members that we will shop for like my aunts and uncles, cousins, in-laws and some close family friends. Each have their own liking and favourites. Putting it together and getting it from different stores can be fulfilling especially if its for people you love. My popular products are the famous Chinese sausages from Dongguan (which is my ancestral home town and if you ask which side of the family, pls proceed to put your head under the hood of your car and slam it real hard!), mushrooms which look like giant boogers from a T-Rex, chocolates (as I have many nephews and nieces as well as sweet tooth sis-in-law), canned abalone, dried meat (my absolute favourite), tangerine oranges (sooo much better than mandarin oranges and of course so much more expensive) and peanuts (not groundnuts for goodness sake, this is the 21st century).
New Year's eve is spent at my elder uncle's house together with my second aunt, my youngest uncle, my mom and my bro. Since we don't celebrate, we always get invited to meals for CNY. Cool eh?! For some reason meals at my uncle's house is very quiet with very little chatter and is finished quite early. We will head on home and by 8pm and will have our own celebration at home.
First day is the coolest. My second aunt will cook the HUGE feast for us all. All of my mom's siblings and their extended family will cram into her house and there will be a lot of noise, festivities and a lot of love. While it for lunch but we will stay until about 5pm chatting, laughing and of course the most important Chinese past time.....eating and my favourite past time, eating pork!! My Ah Yee will cook yam pork, pork knuckle in vinegar, roast pork, steam chicken, prawn in soya sauce, lots of vegetables like peas with chicken gizzard, broccoli and cauliflower, roast duck, chicken feet with mushroom and lotus root soup. She excels in everything! We eat, laugh, eat some more, laugh some more. The day is is made better is my Ah Yee's third son comes back for the holidays.
He is definitely a much better looking Chindian than me (and that is very rare mind you) and stays in Singapore. If he comes back, we have more things to gossip about and I will have a FIELD day updating him on the happenings for the year. Gosh, I feel like one of those old English Victorian geezers, gossiping about everyone in the village! Its fun to watch his expression though. He is well loved by all and while he has a great name, his nick name is Baby and I call him Baby Koko which means elder brother Baby. What an oxymoron....elder brother but Baby. For short, we call him "Beh" where we made a short word even shorter.
First day dinner is with Club 29 cousins. When Beh is back, he will join us and this year he treated us to a good dinner and desert at Alexis at Bangsar Shopping Complex. We will trade stories and gossips all night and I will even put the girls to shame. Wait a minute.....is that something to be proud of?????
Second day morning is when I go back to Kuantan which is my wife's hometown. We will arrive in time for lunch at my eldest sister-in-law's house. She will have a huge lunch party with a buffet line and a lion dance performance. Usually its 2 lions and they will have to climb on each other's shoulder's to get the ang pow from the ceiling, cut a pomelo into a nice shape for prayers and slice mandarin oranges arranging the slices to form words or 4-D numbers.
The next few days is hanging out with my in-laws, watching movie, dinners at home or outside, more lion dances, visiting friends, just hanging out at the beach and gambling (small amounts though). This year I allowed Mikey to join the gambling and the bum took home a cool RM50 from 2 days of gambling. No mean feat for a rookie and when you are betting RM1 per game.
The downsides are that my in-laws don't have HBO so I am usually bored without any TV shows. Luckily I have Mandy's iPod Touch this year so I was able to entertain myself. The other downside is the ang pow. The giving part. Even though I am only half Chinese, I am expected to give full. For those not sure what ang pow (literal translation, red packet) is, its a CNY tradition where married adults will put cash in red packets to be given to children or those who are single. It is to signify good luck. Next year, I will not be giving ang pow to those single above 30 year olds. Hey I am only half Chinese! So sue me!
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