Chinese New Years Blues

I am now in Bangkok on a Monday morning, Second day of CNY, listening to 988 (Malaysia Radio) on the internet. There are some phone calls from Malaysian around the world calling in to wish their family Chinese New Year. Some are living apart from their parents, daughter, sons and brothers and sisters. As they express their New Year wishes and greetings, I could sense the loneliness, the bitterness of living aboard away from their families on such occasion.

What reel that feeling out into the open? Is it the Chinese New Year song that was coming out from their speakers? The Gong, the beat, the fire crackers sounds? I guess if you are alone out there surfing the net in a foreign land now on Chinese New Year, with the sound of keyboard cracking in the background in an office, it does dig out some “Sad” feeling. I guess instead of the keyboard cracking, you will prefer to hear the sound of your niece, nephews, your sons and daughter in the background, your parents cooking and maybe some yelling from neighbor of “Pong” while playing mahjong and of course the fire crackers sounds.

If you are out there years after years, will this feeling still crop up? I guess deep inside most of us, we are still a “kampong boy” who still has the Chinese roots running around in our blood stream. Who can resists the thoughts of sitting in the house with families, eating “love letters”, drinking sarsi and playing cards or mahjong? But personally I believe years after years of urbanization, we are drifting away further and further from all this even in our home countries. I believe there are a lot of us who is from another states working in big city like Kuala Lumpur will travel less and less back to their hometown due to work commitment or etc.

I personally felt that the Chinese New Year spirit is being pulled apart by the strong drift of modernization and development. It could be due to the fact that individually we are now growing faster than we thought. As the world grows smaller and smaller, we are growing further and further apart from our cultures. We used to live in a harmonious “kampong” environment, now most of us lives in condominium, bungalows, terraces house who does not even knows who our neighbors is.

Just flip back to history, in my generation I used to hear about “Kampong” people migrating to the city to work. Now it’s to another country. You could look at your children, niece or nephew who is in their earlier teens, will they wear “red” or bright color new clothes or will they abstain from sweeping the floor, cutting their beard, washing their hair and etc like we do. Let’s hope the Chinese New Year Spirit and culture is here to stay, who would want a Chinese New Year without the lion dance, the songs, the crackers, the reunion dinner, the biscuits, ang pow and etc.......