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Feb 24, 2010
Keeping CNY traditions alive
Reunion dinner, visiting relatives is the social glue that binds families
<!-- by line -->By Goh Sui Noi, Senior Writer
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I HAVE new neighbours - an Australian and his Singaporean wife and their twin toddlers - who moved in just before Chinese New Year. When I stayed home on the third day of the new year entertaining some old classmates, I saw that my new neighbours had a steady stream of visitors through the day.
Later that evening, when we had a chat, I found that Stewart likes the tradition of visiting friends and relatives - and having them visit him in return - during the holiday season so much that he wants to take it home to Australia.
You often bump into the same people as you go from house to house, he says, but that adds to the camaraderie. He has also followed faithfully over three years another Chinese New Year tradition: Buying new clothes for the new year.
It is an irony that Stewart is enthusiastic about traditions that Singaporeans are caring less about these days, discarding them like so much excess baggage.
We have followed these traditions for as long as we can remember, often without questioning why we do so.
We groaningly spring clean our homes days before Chinese New Year, have reunion dinner on the eve and wear new clothes to visit relatives whom we mostly see only once a year, bearing Mandarin oranges and giving or receiving hongbao. We do all this simply because they are part and parcel of the season.
However, more and more Singaporeans are choosing to go overseas during the Chinese New Year holidays, precisely to escape the obligatory - and to them, tiresome - visits to relatives and friends.
I choose not to go away because this is almost the only time I get to catch up with relatives, including cousins I grew up playing rounders with.
Even so, I no longer make the exhausting rounds of visits to relatives' homes with my parents or to friends' homes the way I used to.
I visit just a few close relatives, have friends, including those I hardly see, over to my place, and visit one or two friends or meet them at a restaurant for a meal.
It is a far cry from when I was a child, when we would brave traffic jams to get from paternal grandmother's house to maternal grandfather's house, and from sar lau sim's (third grandaunt on maternal grandfather's side) to sar lau kim's (third grandaunt on maternal grandmother's side) all in one day.
I was not too keen on visiting sar lau sim, for she never failed to remind me of how, when as a toddler, I was dragged, kicking and screaming 'I am not afraid of the police!' into her cavernous, attap-roofed house full of frightening shadows.
Sar lau kim's home was more interesting, with tables full of things such as roll-it-yourself squares of cigarette paper with loose red tobacco, silver boxes of sliced betel nut, leaves and lime, and a backyard with cages of pythons.
When the old folk died, particularly the more distant relatives, the visits stopped and, more often than not, my parents would meet their cousins only at weddings and funerals.
Most children these days are taken to visit only their grandparents, and perhaps some of their parents' friends. It is a reflection of the times, I think, in particular the demise of the extended family, at least among the Chinese in Singapore.
Another tradition under siege is the reunion dinner.
I have two such dinners, one with my husband's family a few days before Chinese New Year, and another with mine on the eve. But I know friends working or studying overseas who did not come home to be with their families this Chinese New Year.
I received an e-mail from a friend saying he was having 'reunion' dinner with four friends who, like him, had children living overseas who were not coming home this year.
He observed that this was a 'sad trend' - of small families bereft of children wont to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Future reunion dinners, if they survive the march of times, he predicted, would be affairs where ageing people huddled together to comfort one another.
But are these traditions significant? Should we lament their passing or just move with the times?
Chinese New Year visiting and the reunion dinner are the social glue that binds families. These annual visits also bring together friends, who often are too preoccupied with their own busy lives to find the time to meet.
When we lose these traditions, we lose practices that keep families together and keep friends in touch with one another. We lose an occasion to reach out and touch, to renew ties that bind us as social beings. If we lose these ties and traditions, we would be the poorer and lonelier for it.
I am reminded of an anecdote about fish and water told by the late American writer David Foster Wallace at a college commencement address.
To paraphrase, two young fish were swimming along when they met an older fish which asked them: 'How's the water?' The two young fish swam on for a bit mulling over the older fish's question. Then one of them turned to the other and asked: 'What the hell is water?'
Sometimes, we don't see what keeps us alive.
Traditions may not be as vital as water and air. While some may be the result of superstition, others are the product of accumulated wisdom.
Spring cleaning once a year is a good way of clearing the dust and cobwebs gathering in forgotten nooks and corners. Having new clothes only at new year was a necessity during a more penurious past, but it is a custom that can teach thrift to our children in these times of relative plenty. Giving big hongbao to less well-off relatives help with schoolbooks and other expenses without hurting their dignity.
We need not cling too rigidly to the past; we can observe old traditions in new ways. I rather like the lunch gathering we have had at a cousin's these past two years, of uncles and aunts and cousins and their spouses and children.
Many of my cousins take this opportunity to pay respects to their elders, thus saving them visits to their homes. We make fewer visits as a result, but we are still able to catch up with one another, exchange recipes and dole out advice - including to young nieces on what courses to take in university. Reunion dinners can be expanded to include friends who are home alone. Or be a gathering of friends.
The trick is to adapt to keep the good traditions alive.
[email protected]
Keeping CNY traditions alive
Reunion dinner, visiting relatives is the social glue that binds families
<!-- by line -->By Goh Sui Noi, Senior Writer
<!-- end by line -->
<!-- end left side bar -->
I HAVE new neighbours - an Australian and his Singaporean wife and their twin toddlers - who moved in just before Chinese New Year. When I stayed home on the third day of the new year entertaining some old classmates, I saw that my new neighbours had a steady stream of visitors through the day.
Later that evening, when we had a chat, I found that Stewart likes the tradition of visiting friends and relatives - and having them visit him in return - during the holiday season so much that he wants to take it home to Australia.
You often bump into the same people as you go from house to house, he says, but that adds to the camaraderie. He has also followed faithfully over three years another Chinese New Year tradition: Buying new clothes for the new year.
It is an irony that Stewart is enthusiastic about traditions that Singaporeans are caring less about these days, discarding them like so much excess baggage.
We have followed these traditions for as long as we can remember, often without questioning why we do so.
We groaningly spring clean our homes days before Chinese New Year, have reunion dinner on the eve and wear new clothes to visit relatives whom we mostly see only once a year, bearing Mandarin oranges and giving or receiving hongbao. We do all this simply because they are part and parcel of the season.
However, more and more Singaporeans are choosing to go overseas during the Chinese New Year holidays, precisely to escape the obligatory - and to them, tiresome - visits to relatives and friends.
I choose not to go away because this is almost the only time I get to catch up with relatives, including cousins I grew up playing rounders with.
Even so, I no longer make the exhausting rounds of visits to relatives' homes with my parents or to friends' homes the way I used to.
I visit just a few close relatives, have friends, including those I hardly see, over to my place, and visit one or two friends or meet them at a restaurant for a meal.
It is a far cry from when I was a child, when we would brave traffic jams to get from paternal grandmother's house to maternal grandfather's house, and from sar lau sim's (third grandaunt on maternal grandfather's side) to sar lau kim's (third grandaunt on maternal grandmother's side) all in one day.
I was not too keen on visiting sar lau sim, for she never failed to remind me of how, when as a toddler, I was dragged, kicking and screaming 'I am not afraid of the police!' into her cavernous, attap-roofed house full of frightening shadows.
Sar lau kim's home was more interesting, with tables full of things such as roll-it-yourself squares of cigarette paper with loose red tobacco, silver boxes of sliced betel nut, leaves and lime, and a backyard with cages of pythons.
When the old folk died, particularly the more distant relatives, the visits stopped and, more often than not, my parents would meet their cousins only at weddings and funerals.
Most children these days are taken to visit only their grandparents, and perhaps some of their parents' friends. It is a reflection of the times, I think, in particular the demise of the extended family, at least among the Chinese in Singapore.
Another tradition under siege is the reunion dinner.
I have two such dinners, one with my husband's family a few days before Chinese New Year, and another with mine on the eve. But I know friends working or studying overseas who did not come home to be with their families this Chinese New Year.
I received an e-mail from a friend saying he was having 'reunion' dinner with four friends who, like him, had children living overseas who were not coming home this year.
He observed that this was a 'sad trend' - of small families bereft of children wont to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Future reunion dinners, if they survive the march of times, he predicted, would be affairs where ageing people huddled together to comfort one another.
But are these traditions significant? Should we lament their passing or just move with the times?
Chinese New Year visiting and the reunion dinner are the social glue that binds families. These annual visits also bring together friends, who often are too preoccupied with their own busy lives to find the time to meet.
When we lose these traditions, we lose practices that keep families together and keep friends in touch with one another. We lose an occasion to reach out and touch, to renew ties that bind us as social beings. If we lose these ties and traditions, we would be the poorer and lonelier for it.
I am reminded of an anecdote about fish and water told by the late American writer David Foster Wallace at a college commencement address.
To paraphrase, two young fish were swimming along when they met an older fish which asked them: 'How's the water?' The two young fish swam on for a bit mulling over the older fish's question. Then one of them turned to the other and asked: 'What the hell is water?'
Sometimes, we don't see what keeps us alive.
Traditions may not be as vital as water and air. While some may be the result of superstition, others are the product of accumulated wisdom.
Spring cleaning once a year is a good way of clearing the dust and cobwebs gathering in forgotten nooks and corners. Having new clothes only at new year was a necessity during a more penurious past, but it is a custom that can teach thrift to our children in these times of relative plenty. Giving big hongbao to less well-off relatives help with schoolbooks and other expenses without hurting their dignity.
We need not cling too rigidly to the past; we can observe old traditions in new ways. I rather like the lunch gathering we have had at a cousin's these past two years, of uncles and aunts and cousins and their spouses and children.
Many of my cousins take this opportunity to pay respects to their elders, thus saving them visits to their homes. We make fewer visits as a result, but we are still able to catch up with one another, exchange recipes and dole out advice - including to young nieces on what courses to take in university. Reunion dinners can be expanded to include friends who are home alone. Or be a gathering of friends.
The trick is to adapt to keep the good traditions alive.
[email protected]
