Chinese New Year 2010 - Year of The Tiger

Chinese New Year (also called The Lunar New Year or The Spring Festival) falls, in 2010, on 14 February. That day is the first day of the new year based on the lunar calender. The Year used now follows the international convention of the Gregorian Calender (started by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582). So it's 2010 instead of the old format, which was along the line of "The Xth Year of the Reign of Emperor XXX". That old way was apparently abolished in China in 1911 after the Revolution (Overthrow of The Emperor Puyi). Apparently Dr Sun Yat Sen had then tried using a continuous year-count starting from the first emperor. The Yellow Emperor was born in 2698 BCE. It would make this year starting 14 February the Year 4708!

For us, being later generations of Overseas Chinese (Huá qiáo), many of the rituals and traditions have been forgotten or cheerfully amended/ignored. Thus leaving mostly the enjoyable aspects relating to eating, wearing new clothes, and collecting AngPows (for those unmarried boys and girls).

There is an effort made to "spring-clean" the home, decorate with the usual Chinese New Year (CNY) stuff and to turn up for the New Year's Eve Family Dinner. I noticed in recent years that many many families are holding their dinners in the local Chinese Restaurants (totally avoiding the sweat-work in the kitchen and the subsequent washing-up).

Decorations include scrolls and posters (in red and gold colours, with chinese characters saying luck, fortune, prosperity and good health, abound). Flowers, fruits and foods are included in the marketing ploys where their names are pronounced similarly to those auspicious characters)

I went to one of our local "chinese supermarket" ThaiSeng Supermarket for some CNY Goodies. In the old days, they were one of those who imported direct from Hong Kong and Mainland China. Nowadays, I only visit ThaiSeng for those things from China that are "non-halal" (non-kosher to muslims, mainly stuff with pork or lard).

You should note from the photo taken today that their only attempt at CNY decoration is the sad row of lanterns across the front of the shop. Its not much better in most shops. Festivals are no longer that "special" I'm afraid. But we still make the best of it.

Apart from the usual mandarin oranges (China), I usually look for something that is new for this year or that are slightly different from those items last year. I bought some Almond cookies (Macau) that are slightly different by having a salted egg yolk filling. The eggrolls (Hong Kong) are slightly salty (plus chives) and so somewhat different from the usual sweet ones.