Friday 8 February 2008

Happy Year of the Rat



February 7th marked the first day of the Year of the Rat in the Chinese Lunar Calendar. As per our custom, all my relatives from my father's side gathered at my grandma's and had a sumptuous and noisy meal. As we are no longer children, my cousins and I restrained from doing what we did when we were little, ie running to the toilet straight after we received our red packets (see further below for an explanation) to see how much money we've got this year...
We still had a good time anyway.

For the curious, here are a few must-haves for Chinese New Year:

Beautiful daffodils - my mum's favourite. In Chinese we call them Shui Xian which translates Water Fairies - what a lovely name! Many families put them in shallow dishes around Chinese New Year. They give out an amazingly pure and refreshing scent.



Everyone's favourite!! These red packets containing a token of money are usually given by married persons to relatives/friends of a generation younger than yours, or younger relatives/friends of the same generation. If you're not married you can escape this duty, and apparently when you first get married you receive a one-year grace period during which you are not obliged to give! These colourfully decorated red packets were given to me and my sisters by my aunt.



Collection of sweets and goodies - sweet lotus seeds at the top, followed by (going clockwise): sweet mellon pieces, sweet coconut pieces, sweet lotus roots, random japanese sweets, sweet melon again, with dried water melon seeds in the middle.


In recent years this particular "dish" has become popular with the general public in Hong Kong, though it used to only be consumed by certain groups of residents in the New Territories. Normally it is made up of: Chinese mushrooms, dried beancurd, prawns, abalones, fried pigs skin(!), dried oysters, dried scallops, sea cucumbers, turnip, all braised in a yummy thick sauce.

It may look small but it can easily fill the stomachs of 15 people!

Glutinous Rice Cake - okay, it may not look like the ones you see in the shops but this is my first attempt of a homemade Chinese pudding, and judging from my parents' reaction so far I think it's quite good!!

---
I leave for Cebu, the Philippines on Tuesday for 3 weeks to work with Christ for Asia, a Christian charity that works with street children in Cebu City. It will no doubt be very challenging but I'm excited... so watch this space!

Monday 4 February 2008

Singapore: Slings and Arrows

Last month I flew to Singapore for a 2-week visit and met up with old friends and relations. I have always had a love-hate relationship with this place, and with each visit my feelings grew even more complicated.

Love, because Singapore is clean, tidy, relaxed and, most notably, nicely hot. The people (I used to find anyway) seem a lot more down-to-earth than their fellow counterparts in, say, Hong Kong. I felt I could let my hair down completely, wear any random top, bottoms and flip-flops I could find and wouldn't feel embarrassed or inappropriately dressed going to most places. Because I spent 6.5 of my growing years there, I have many good bosom friends from high school days. From memory our concerns were to do well in the O and A levels and know nice boys (in that order), and we didn't seem too fussed about money, fame or even beauty. It's great making friends in that context as friends such as these seem to remain forever as pure and innocent as before, no matter what time has done to us 10 years on.

Hate. Well, hate is probably too strong a word. Reservations, maybe. The usual complaints aside (e.g. the apparent homogeneity of things, the paternalistic governing, the lack of freedom, the extreme competitiveness), I always wished for in the people I met more spontaneity, more outside-the-box kind of thinking and more daring attitudes. I can't say I'm not generalising somewhat. I remember being 17 (i.e. rather naive and idealistic) and dying to express my views on certain rather politically sensitive topics in our General Paper class, and while our teacher seemed slightly pleased to see the potential of a good debate, no classmate of mine raised their hands to say anything in response. Perhaps it was a topic no one was really interested in, but on hindsight I think it was probably either apolitical indifference or some sort of subtle fear that dictated the silence of my class.

I'm not saying Singaporeans can't think for themselves, but certainly I'm not sure if they are really encouraged to, in spite of all those creative writing and thinking lessons they are made to take. Can one create creativity? It seems like most of the time the people don't feel completely free to express themselves. The inability to be free with one's thoughts, I think, curbs creativity and stifles spontaneity, and in turn further perpetuates the bubble of apparent success and security.

A good friend asked me over drinks one evening whether I thought Singaporeans were shallow. I asked her what she meant by shallow. She said: "obsessed with the materialistic, with little culture or history." This time in Singapore I did notice the increasing affluence, how everyone seemed to be all out shopping all the time, and I could hear a lot more talk about huge killings made in the property market, higher wages and bigger spending power, and was even told that government-supported scientific research institutes remunerate their staff based on their profit-making performance (instead of research ability or results). I felt sad seeing Singapore turning into another money-obsessed city, not least because I now felt less relaxed about how I dressed/looked on the street, but my response to my friend was - isn't the whole world going that way too? As for culture and history, given Singapore only has 42 years of history since its independence, can one expect much of a culture at this point? And just when we were discussing this point, a Singaporen version of the song Pretty Woman was blasting in the cafe. That's culture, no?