Chinese New Year Eve
Just a short expat reflection on doing away with familiar traditions or modifying them. A couple of my Singaporean friends who live overseas say that they don’t miss Chinese New Year at all — particularly if they have to give out ang paos (red packets with money — usually to kids and old folks).
True, there are some aspects of it I don’t care much for: firstly, my extended family is not close-knit so conversation always runs dry and awkward after a while. They are very conservative Chinese folks who don’t really like speaking English so it has always been very hard for my sisters and I to get along well with our cousins. I almost always get asked, “When do you graduate from university? Oh, you started working? So big already!” (Now that I am screaming towards the big 3-0, that ain’t such a bad thing…)
Just a bit of history: my father is the youngest among his siblings so my sisters and I have always been seen as the babies of the whole family so we don’t seem to grow up in their eyes. I mean, sometimes, they still call us by our toddler names (ming ming for my elder sister, yu yu for me, and ai ai for my younger sister) – the horror — but I’d like to believe we look much younger than our actual ages.
Chinese New Year snacks are chalky biscuity things that I never crave. Gambling never holds my attention for long and the only game my relatives play is mahjong. I tried to learn it before but I haven’t played it for real.
On the other hand, I would open my ang paos with glee as a kid and as an adult (haha!) and in more recent years I took the opportunity to talk to my sisters more as we never really saw each other much, especially when I moved out and my elder sister got married. The one thing I totally feel nostalgic for is the reunion dinner. My mum and Yati would prepare the most awesome seafood hot pot whose leftovers would last for a week. The broth would get thicker and tastier with each further brew…. Mmmm… And somehow everyone would be extra cheerful and chatty on this day and the dogs would prance around the table legs to nip at any stray raw meat.
Though I live in a new country, I think I should still carry on some part of this tradition or at least create my own. I’m happy the kangaroo is around in Tokyo so we can have our own reunion dinner. We invited some friends to Hong Kong Teahouse Restaurant, a classy dim sum joint, in Roppongi Hills. Last year, a friend from Singapore came to visit during Chinese New Year so we headed to this same restaurant. I don’t think it has to be the same restaurant but I’ll try to make it a point to have a Chinese meal on this day of the year with loved ones overseas. I’m truly a Chinesey gal at heart — I’m so excited about stuffing my face with authentic Cantonese food that I am blogging about it.
Related posts:
Leave a Reply