Non-event

I was talking to a patient of mine this morning and whilst calibrating her shoes, I asked, So...how was your Christmas?

"Oh, it was okay. Had some friends over and I cooked dinner for them. It was nice and quiet."


Oh yeah.


And then the topic inadvertently swung to Chinese New Year which is probably the biggest event of all that's celebrated in Merlion City currently and I asked her how preparations are going for it.

"Oh, no. I'm not a big fan of Chinese New Year. Frankly, its a bit of a non event now. It used to be so much fun as a kid but now...its not really that much fun anymore."

Yeah. I totally get you.


It's really interesting how it has changed so much over the years. I remember back in my younger days when it used to be all about gathering as much moolah as you can get out of the red hong bao packets and guzzling down as much junk as you can. Especially since parents aren't allow to scold as it would bring bad luck. I would plead and plead to go out visiting with friends and once the verbal permission was granted, I would be out of the house. My little gang and I would walk halfway across town to visit other friends and whoever had a cellphone (it was a luxury in those days) would ring up our respective friends and let them know we were coming. We would let off firecrackers by the DOZENS, each one either heralding our arrival to another friend's house or to farewell it.

Chinese New Year was full of drums and cymbals clashing and the colour red and visits and friends and junk food and about counting money at the end of the day to see who earned more.

But now, its toned down.

Or maybe I've not celebrated Chinese New Year for way too long.

Being away in the Land of the Long White Cloud where I was probably in the white zone, you don't get to experience too much of your own local culture. I remember Chinese New Year being the time for special exams to pass the previous year's failed examinations or for one year, I recall, I was on a Valentine's Day getaway and completely forgot about it until I saw the tacky Gong Xi Fa Cai sign plastered across the door frame of a house. Not a big deal.

But now, its become exactly what my patient said. A non event.

What was quite startling was that she was of Chinese descent herself and I guess, I never really saw that kind of behaviour apart from anyone but myself. My apathetic meh views towards something like Chinese New Year was even now, kept quiet rather than touted. It seems...sacrilegious somehow. To not want the TONG TONG TONG CHIANG sounds booming throughout the house. To not want the words for prosperity and wealth and happiness characters and symbols strung all over the place. I know it well enough that I want all of that and more. But not to want it....seems...not Chinese. At all.

Yeah, yeah, I know that we as a race are kind of acknowledged to be money grabbing squint-eyed people. But meh. We've done relatively well, have we not?

I think this was one of the things I struggled with just a bit when I was contemplating whether to come back to an environment that as similar to my old lifestyle. As much as I enjoyed living and working in Wangas, I had a startling fear that I was losing my Chinese heritage. I had missed hanging out in a more Asian crowd. Don't get me wrong, my white friends were awesome and most of them treated me like family. But deep down inside, I was afraid that I would forget my roots. Already, I was starting to lose my Malaysian accent and that was something I was always proud of. Whenever I spoke English, I spoke with a Kiwi "twang."

So it was time to come back to my roots.

Do I regret it? Nah, not really. Sometimes, if I close my eyes and imagine I'm in a poorer country, I feel like I'm right at home. Of course, I don't use Malay as often as I should and I'm speaking wayyy more Chinese and Hokkien rather than my own mother tongue of Foochow, its okay. It feels like I'm where I should be.

So yeah. Non event, huh? So here I am, smack dab in the middle of my Chinese heritage and now, I don't feel like being one of them. Bleh.

Or is it just that I've grown up and grown out of it? Huh.