Gong xi … Gong xi …
Happy Chinese New Year!!
The lunar new year is hugely celebrated here in Singapore, but as a Chinese Indonesian, we don’t celebrate it as much. Not as much as we should, I guess. Of course we make international calls to our families and send sms greetings to friends. But that’s about it really.
We don’t go to relatives’ houses (we don’t have any in Singapore anyway). We don’t give or receive any angpaos (read: red packets filled with money … hmmm). We don’t clean up our houses the day before chinese new year (simply because it is believed that you’re not supposed to do these on the day itself).
So what do we do on Chinese New Year then?
This year we went to Singapore Botanic Gardens in the morning. Other than us, 95% of the gardens’ visitors were non-chinese. They’re either expats, tourists, malays or indians. Orchard Road was considerably quiet, with most of its shops (even its huge shopping centres) closed for the whole day. It was Anya’s first ever visit to a public park, and she enthusiastically went, ‘Ooo! Ooo!’ everytime she saw a dog. Haha.
In the afternoon, we had a cosy get-together at a friend’s house.
Nice.
