Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year, or the lunar new year, is a huge celebration in Singapore, lasting for two weeks.  This year it began on Sunday, February 10.  Before the new year begins, you see the signs of it all over Singapore.

Countdown to the new year in a grocery store

Above the guy's head are the number of days, hours, minutes,
and seconds until the new year begins.

This year is "the year of the snake," and this snake was at the Singapore Zoo.

A snake above the street in Chinatown

When Chinese New Year begins, so do the "visitations."  People have "reunion dinners" where they get together with family; and friends and church people visit each other throughout the two weeks as well.  Wherever you go, you bring two oranges with you to give to the host--and the host gives you two oranges in exchange.  Another thing you bring are "ang pow," or red packets.  Inside these envelopes are money, ranging from a few dollars for friends to higher amounts for close family.  These are given by married couples to single people and children.  So when we went visiting, our kids would receive red packets, and my husband and I would hand them out.

Ang pow

We were happy to be able to share our first Chinese New Year experience with our friend Jeff Kotman!  We were invited to the homes of a couple families from church.  At the first home, dinner began with the mixing of a Chinese salad.  After all the ingredients were ready (first picture below), we were all given big chopsticks and mixed the salad together (second picture).  We attended this dinner with another family from church, and some friends of the family who hosted us.

The meal

The people with whom we shared our first Chinese New Year dinner

At the second home we went to, we sang some Chinese songs.  The tunes were unfamiliar, and so were the words, even if they were written out for us in regular letters (as opposed to Chinese characters), but we tried to sing them anyway. :-)

Angela and Yoon Chuan explaining the meaning of the words before we sang

On Saturday, February 16, the church had its own Chinese New Year visitation.  Members were invited to one of two homes, and then all met together at church afterwards.  As with Christmas caroling, this is used as a method of evangelism, so that those who host the visitation can have their unchurched family members present.  At the house we went to, we sang, shared some food, and heard an "exhortation" by my husband.  He gave a different speech at church, where we also sang a few songs and then had lunch together.

When we were leaving church, the following sight met our eyes.  It was accompanied with loud music, similar to what I heard when I was home from church the next day...trying to listen to the P.R. Psalm Choir, which was very much drowned out! :-)

At midnight that same Sunday night, we started smelling smoke.  Around each building here there are barrels used for burning offerings to ancestors.  Those who practice this type of idolatry believe that anything they burn here will go to their ancestors in the afterlife.  So they burn paper cars, paper iPads, paper houses, paper servants, you name it--and they believe their relative receives the reality of those things in the afterlife. When we started smelling smoke on Sunday, we looked outside, and the burn barrels were surrounded by people, with the fires roaring.  This time, instead of ancestor worshipers, it was some Hokkien people (a particular Chinese ethnic group), who use the ninth day of the new year to burn offerings, especially sugarcane, to their god, the Jade Emperor of Heaven. We had to shut our windows, because the smoke made our flat hazy inside, and when my husband went for a walk the next day, he saw many piles of ashes.

A couple of other random notes about Chinese New Year:  First, it is a time for buying new things.  People will clean their houses well, and buy new household supplies as well as a lot of new clothing.  Secondly, a popular food during Chinese New Year is bak kwa.  I've heard that bak kwa is eaten year round but is more expensive during Chinese New Year because it is so popular at that time.  It tastes quite a bit like bacon, except it's "chewier," and it really is good!

So we have experienced our first Chinese New Year.  I was told today that in the seventh month of this lunar year, the above-mentioned burn barrels will again be in full use, because that is the month that "ghosts" come back, and those who worship their ancestors have to keep the ghosts away, or at least make them happy.  There are performances held, where the front row of seating is left open so the ghosts can sit there; and people are afraid to let their kids go swimming because the ghosts might do something to them.  It seems we have a lot to learn yet while we live here!