Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Yes it’s happy Chinese New Year to all this week. It’s been quite an exciting week for me as it’s my first real experience of CNY here in Singapore as I arrived last year just after the end of it. This year I was quite prepared to make the most of seeing the celebrations here which started off rightly with a trip to Chinatown on new years eve.
It was packed as you’d expect and all manner of red and gold ornaments, charms and decorations were being sold from the makeshift stalls in the rammed streets to starry eyed passers by looking for that last bit of useless crap that everyone from nearly every culture ends up buying at celebration time.
I got sucked in by the mind bending tractor beams of one eager salesman and came away a few dollars lighter with some Chinese scriptures and a bag full of sweeties to help assist my expanding waistline through the proceeding year of the rabbit. Being a rabbit myself as far as Chinese astrology goes, it should be a fruitful year for me, so lets just see shall we.
Chinatown on any normal night is a veritable feast of bargaining and browsing the numerous stalls which range from the buy 5 get 5 free fridge magnet type to the somewhat moderately tastefully looking antiques shops which are probably not all that antique.
On new years eve, it was like the very fabric of society was about to unravel and the only way to save yourself was to buy up more food than you could possibly eat in a year and just for good measure buy up a few extra fridge magnets just in case. It was lots of fun though and I ended up having some of the most amazing oyster omelette I’ve ever had. It’s exactly what it says and is just oysters cut up and mixed into an omelette. It is mind blowingly good and as with most hawker food it was gorgeous to gulp down with an ice cold Tiger and have a bit of a laugh with the passing waitress who was keen to try and teach me some additional Mandarin other than the very rude swear words that I’d been taught by a couple of my local friends here. There was a good reason to this as I’d been very kindly invited to spend Reunion dinner with one of my good friends family so it was going to be handy if I could turn up and say a few words and not look like I had a bad case of Tourette's.

My good friend R was kind enough to invite me to her cousins condo to experience a proper CNY family dinner as she thought it would be good for me to see. I was overjoyed at the prospect so spent the next few days trying to muster up some basic Mandarin and learn a few bits about some of the Chinese customs and general do’s and don’ts. The Chinese are probably some of the most superstitious and ceremonial people I’ve ever met and all sorts of strange and quaint peculiarities come into effect at this time. Not owing money to people, cleaning the house on a certain day, wearing the right coloured clothing. It’s a minefield of potential faux pas for a lumbering Ang Mo like myself to fall into so I spent a day or two trying to find out as much as I could so I’d look less like the clumsy grinning idiot that I often do at functions where I’m the odd one out. I actually do quite enjoy being in new situations but only when I’ve got something to contribute and if spouting a bit of Gong Xi Fa Cai was going to raise a smile or the odd "What's he saying??" eyebrow or two then so be it.
So off I trotted up to the north of the island on my trusty Hog (i.e not so trusty after developing yet another funny rattle and a spuriously odd sounding horn) with my bag full of mandarin oranges and sweaty palms clutching a few post-it notes with enough polite gestures scribbled down to get me through most dinner related conversational situations.

If during the day I was ever in need of saying “I’ve lost my passport” or “ “Where is the chemist?” then I was truly equipped with the right vocabulary. Anything else and I was going to be winging it.

The mandarin oranges are presented to the householder as a good will gesture as they represent abundance and good fortune. You give two to the host – and you get two back, which you then continually recycle as you visit other homes. For a nation that does absolutely bugger all in terms of recycling (something which I find odd given the organisational side of things) it’s the best example of use and reuse you’re likely to see here.
Cunningly I’d gone with an entire bag of spare oranges just in case I cocked up something and ended up being an orange down, but it seemed to go to plan and I left with the requisite number of fruits. I did spend the next few days having mandarin orange smoothies which was another plus side to my over exuberance at filling up my fridge magnet and fruit armageddon stockade.

When I arrived I was warmly greeted by R’s family who were all super friendly and made me feel at home. As customary at these kind of occasions a paper plate was thrust in to my palm (slightly obscuring my now streaking “Do you have an extra pillow” translation) and was then instructed to fill my boots with as much homemade food as possible. Mrs R was happy to point out all the things that they’d made which I confess were all delicious. I think my favourite was the little jellies in the shape of animals of which I must have been around 12 years old when I had last had it without Tequila in it.
I ate so many of them I started getting an odd look from a passing 5 year old which was something of a look of "How many of MY jellies are you actually going to eat Mr??". I backed away at this point to the slightly more grown up food of chicken wings giving my most polite smile that is actually possible with a mouth full of jelly.

It was really fun to meet generation after generation of family members and it made me think about Christmases at home long ago when I was younger when aunts, uncles and grandparents all used to gather around and generally remark on how much I’d grown up since the last time they’d seen me. Ha – I’m now 6ft 4’. No more growing required!
One of the great traditions here at this time is the red packet giving or Hóng Bāo. The custom is for the more senior folks to give red envelopes of money to those that are younger and unmarried as a symbol of property, good luck and also to ward off evil spirits. In the envelope there is a small wad of notes which will add up to an even number, again another good luck sign. I never really expected to get any red packets at all as I was after all a complete stranger in the house and not exactly a spring chicken these days but some of the elders were quite curious about me and demanded R to have me dragged over and to duly have a little packet thrust in to my mitt.
Now being invited around to someone’s house for a special occasion and being fed till you drop with jelly and then being paid for it is my idea of a good day out.
I left it to the next day to actually open one and inside was a bunch of crisply folded brand new two dollar notes. R giggled a lot at my expression on receiving my first as I was quite surprised about it to be honest and secretly chuffed to bits.

My favourite bit of the day was the tossing of the Yusheng fish salad.
Yusheng is a fish based salad which originates from the 1960s in Singapore. It’s another sign of prosperity and good health to have this. It’s a very brightly coloured dish made up of carrots, pickles, peppers with salmon strips mixed into it. It’s then drenched in a mountain of crackers and sesame seeds until it looks like a food version of Mount Vesuvius that is just about to go off if even another morsel of food is added to its crater like peak.
The best bit about this though is that everyone gathers around it with chop sticks and decimates the thing in to a frenzy of salad tossing - throwing it higher and higher whist yelling out phrases of prosperity. The higher you toss the salad the more prosperous your year ahead is supposedly going to be. Step back kids – the 6ft 4 fella is coming through.
After getting a bit carried away I ended up nearly having to wipe my salad out of the ceiling fan - although it certainly appears that my year ahead might actually be quite prosperous given the amount of vertical my little bit of salmon took.
After everyone has had a go at mixing the salad it’s served into small bowls and eaten with chop sticks. It’s actually quite tasty and one of R’s uncles was adamant that I have second and third portions whilst making sure I had a good fill of the yummy salmon which was pretty fantastic.

After dinner it was time for some family photographs which was cute and nice to see a whole range of family generations sitting together whilst desperately trying to keep a front row of 7 year olds still long enough to get a couple of shots for the family album. After dispersing and for a brisk walk around the condo gardens it was time to listen to Mr R sing some traditional Chinese folk songs, mostly from around the communist era I believe. Here my Mandarin phrasebook was sadly lacking I’m afraid. I believe communist folk songs are in the next edition.
Now the Chinese love a good sing song but Mr R was actually pretty damn good and it was really nice to watch and listen to. He was good enough to explain some of the meanings but it was nice to just listen and see some of the places that he’d been invited to sing at in China which set me off thinking of all the places that I’d like to go and visit there in the coming year. All in all it was a really interesting day and I was really grateful to have been invited along. It’s exactly why I’m here and being able to experience it was lots of fun. Big thanks to R and family!

I must have made a good enough impression as I got my invite back for next year. I think some of that might be to clean off the remaining Yusheng that is still stuck in the ceiling fan but we’ll see.