Taking Stock of CNY Traditions

CNY decoration @ Leicester Square

Seeing how Chinese New Year is celebrated over a 15-day period, I guess this post isn't that dated?

Pop Quiz:
Q: If you're more than a thousand miles away from home during an important & auspicious festival in the Chinese calendar, whaddya do, whaddya do?
A: You try to replicate the raucous atmosphere & 'fweeeling', of course!

Here's a checklist of customs & traditions which we took 'pains' to observe during our 1st CNY in London:

1) Clean the house before the CNY
On Fri (16th Feb), I took on my haus frau duties with unbelievable gusto. I cleaned, washed, Dettol-ed, vacuumed the whole house. And it wasn't even Monday!

2) Don something new
Danielle wore a new chinese 'samfu-like' garment, all set to show off some nifty gungfu manoeuvres! Kee-yak! In stark comparison, the only new thingamies the Mister & I had on us were... our underthongs.

Can you tell? Heh heh heh.

3) Stock up ye CNY goodies
Meiling made delicious pineapple tarts & kueh bangkit one weekend and graciously gave us her 'best' batch! My mum sent us GLORY pineapple tarts which we're still savouring ever so slowly. They arrived all crumbly but the buttery pastry goodness was left intact. My sis sent Bee Cheng Hiang 'ba hu' which was walloped in one sitting! CNY is all about gluttony too, in'it? :P

3) Steamboat
No CNY is complete without the proverbial steamboat dinner. Lucky for us we brought along our steamboat appliance, perfect for an occasion like this. We had 2 kinds of soup - the clear meat-based one, and spicy Taiwanese mala. Our dishes consisted of home-made dumplings (Meiling), luncheon meat, golden mushrooms, assorted fishballs, prawns, thinly sliced chicken/pork/beef, tung hoon etc etc. It was a most scrumptious spread!

4) Gambling
Dee played the 'banker' & we played '21' into the night (well, the other 3 did. I was completely knackered, & slept together with Danielle). Everyone was a winner... we played for kicks not money.

5) CNY music
What is CNY without the cacophonous sounds of cymbals clashing and drums pounding?! We tuned into FM95.8 on Meiling's laptop, cheered as Singaporeans did the CNY countdown & shimmied to the 'dong dong dong chang' music.

6) Roll in an 'ong lai' for good fortune
Ahh yes, we did the whole 'roll in a pineapple thing' just for laughs. With a nice, ripe pineapple waiting at the door, we cued the lil one in for the 'ong lai' ceremony! She took it very seriously, she did.

7) Mee Sua for breakfast
An age old tradition at my in-laws. Meiling played matriach for a day by cooking us steaming hot bowls of mee sua with dumplings & egg, eaten with red cut chilli. Oh Mummy!

8) Ang pows
Lucky Danielle got ang pows from 奶奶, 公公/Grandma, Ah Yee/Ah Teoh, and her 1st London ang pow from the newly-weds, Mr and Mrs Andy Lane! Keerr-ching!

9) Bring on the bubbly! *hick*
We popped champagne, guzzled Guinness, emptied our wine glasses and... drank copious amounts of tea?!

10) Be with Family
The most important thing about CNY is spending it with family. And on Sunday, we (together with the Lanes) made our way to church to thank our Heavenly Father for His grace and blessings for another year!