By Administration
Image source: theatlantic.com
To our Chinese readers
around the world
A very Happy Chinese New
Year to you and your loved ones. There will be no Lux Mundi Sunday Weekly for
tomorrow. In fact at Hosanna EFC in Ipoh, there will not be any Sunday Service
as well since most of our congregation will be spending precious time with the
family members who would have returned home. Some have gone interstate where
their ancestral homes are.
Tonight is Family Reunion,
which is the Chinese equivalent of the American Thanksgiving Day. It is a day (called
chú xī and written natively as 除夕) where
family members have all returned to their parents’ homes to share their dinner
together for that one time a year in a traditional practice that has been staple
for more than a thousand years. In an increasing number of cases, reunited
families will also be having their reunion bashes in Chinese restaurants for
practical and convenient reasons – so be forewarned, this is NOT the day to casually
walk into a popular Chinese diner and expect to find an empty table!
The Chinese take their traditions
seriously (Parts 1,
2
and 3
here) and Chinese New Year’s Eve is no exception. Family members from abroad
are also likely to make their way home, which is why travel-bound Chinese from
all over the world will have been busy scheduling their flights home in the
last number of days. They may come from America, Australia, England, Scotland,
Ireland, New Zealand or Canada but their destinations will be China, Malaysia,
Hong Kong, Taiwan or Singapore or whichever country that you find an ancestral
Chinese population.
In Ipoh (Malaysia),
residential streets will once again be clogged up by cars of returning family
members including those from our southerly neighbours, Singapore. For that one
time every year, these will be days when simply coffeeshops with Ipoh’s
legendary noodle dishes will be chockablock full of ‘tourists’ and ‘annual
visitors’ and so there will be no places left for locals.
Not just that, prices will
skyrocket beyond reasonable expectation. A simple iced Chinese tea drink will
go up from 0.50 sen (US0.12/AUD0.17) to anything like RM1.00 (US0.24/AUD0.34) or
even more. That’s a minimum of 100 percent price hike, if not more! For some of
us, the best places to eat during the Chinese New Year season might be the
Indian curry houses where the prices don’t go up at all.
For my family, Chinese New
Year 2016 will be an entirely different experience altogether. It will be the very
first time, my mother won’t be around. Having passed
away only recently in October 2015, we still miss here. That hole in all
our hearts will take time to heal. It will also be the first time that we have
brand new additions to our family to usher in the New Year. Our newborn twins,
Heather and Bridget, will bring us joy while we remember our beloved mom.
I have included a very
special video that was sent to me by a relative only a few hours ago. It would
provide our non-Chinese readers a very good idea of how the Chinese value the
little things in life that bring their families together. For our Chinese
readers, the video might be a good reminder of what such values are that we
should treasure.
For reasons unclear to me, I have had difficulties uploading the video to the website so that you can view it directly here. This means that the best I can do is to provide you with a link to the video clip, which I have uploaded to MediaFire. Whatever it is - and I apologise for the inconvenience - it is well worth watching.
Here is the link:
Have a memorable Chinese
New Year.
Khen Lim
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