IT is my eighteenth Chinese New Year (CNY) in Malaysia. My eighteenth week of sleepless nights due to firecrackers, invitation to celebratory food throwing, witnessing breath-taking acrobatics by lion dancers and hopeless overindulging on mandarin oranges and paper-thin love letter waffles.
But, let’s start from the beginning. To a foreigner in Asia, Chinese New Year is one of the most formidable holidays in the calendar. Without being privy to preparations happening in Chinese homes, hotels or department stores, we outsiders seem to wake up one morning to a sea of red lanterns blanketing the city skies.
In true Malaysian fashion, huge sales are being held in virtually every retail configuration in town, and some impatient kids in the neighbourhood light firecrackers days, or nights, rather, before the actual New Year’s Eve.
So far so good.
As is the human condition, however, many are the voices that lament the changes in recent years. Ah, the good old days.
“We used to be so excited to get ang pow from our elders,” I hear. Kids seem to expect much more these days.
“We always dressed up in traditional outfits,” they say. As long as it is red and bright, youngsters are good to go in casual attire nowadays.
“We loved the home-cooked goodies at Ah Ma’s house,” they regret. Family gatherings in res-taurants are fast becoming the new norm.
“We used to visit every member of the extended family at their homes.” Sending well wishes through Facebook or WhatsApp instead is probably the saddest change in the century-old traditions of CNY.
Expectations, habits and traditions change, but not all hope is lost, far from it.
Lion dances are a wonderful custom. Not only is the artistic and acrobatic prowess of the dancers and musicians quite formidable, but once the masks come off, it is always uplifting to see how young the participants are. This particular aspect of the CNY tradition is alive and well among the young, the not so young and the young at heart alike.
Many features of these celebrations have grown close to my heart over the years. And yet, I cherish one characteristic most of all. CNY celebrations are a truly inclusive affair. No other cultural festival is as embracing of others as this one.
Every New Year’s day sees a traffic jam not outside, but inside our gated community. Each resident stops at the guarded gate to hand out copious amounts of red envelopes and cases of mandarin oranges to the faithful foreign souls that keep us safe in our little enclave all year long.
Every car porch features red lanterns and long chains of giant, fake firecrackers, mine included, and this regardless of the provenance or cultural background of the resident.
“Gong Xi, Gong Xi, Gong Xi Ni Ya.”
Every child in Malaysia knows the lyrics to this song. Including my children and their American, Korean, Russian and Indian friends.
Every year, on a particularly auspicious day, we are invited to gather around a massive plate to lou the yee sang as high as we can. Although making a huge mess with our food is not at all part of our culture, we are always grateful for the opportunity to join in this particular merriment.
Although these CNY-related activities are common for our Chinese friends and neighbours, it is not all that evident for us to be welcomed to partake in them so openly.
Cultural appropriation is a big bone of contention all over the world these days.
Yet, no one minds the paper lanterns in my car porch, nobody gives me “the look” at a lion dance performance, nobody takes offence at my children trying, and probably failing miserably, at singing the Gong Xi-song in public. And it is perfectly acceptable for me to try to squeeze into a bright red cheongsam. Although I have to admit, I really should not, it is not easy on the eyes.
As foreigners in Malaysia, we have many things to be thankful for. The readiness of the local Chinese community to share their New Year merriment with us is definitely one of them.
The writer is a long-term expatriate, a restless traveller, an observer of the human condition, and unapologetically insubordinate