Singapore Chinese New Year
Well, Christmas has come and gone. The western baubles and decorations that were all over the malls and Orchard Road have been retired, thank goodness. It’s a bit grating to see giant plastic gingerbread men and Santa Claus under the palm trees; to hear songs about silent nights in a land where road noise and personal sound systems reign; to see lots of propaganda about eggnog, Christmas cake and ham in a land where eating such stuff would induce a major heat stroke and heart attack almost immediately. There’s nothing like being on the Equator to convince you that Christmas is clearly a northern hemisphere celebration of the winter solstice.
So now that’s over; what will the good merchants of Singapore sell? Chinese New Year stuff, of course!!
This I can get into.
Now the malls are filled with red silk lanterns and giant red and pink floral arrangements. There are lovely topiary orange trees all over. The lion dance puppets and costumes are on standby. The music they pipe in is neither pop nor Bing Crosby, but traditional Chinese tunes, either played on erhus and flutes or sung at the tops of their lungs by very happy-sounding kids. People go around singing along, rather than having the music inflicted on them.
The range of merchandise is wide, but traditional stuff dominates. Red envelopes in zillions of designs, so you can give money to kids on New Year’s Day (Jan. 25); red and gold decorations; firecrackers in long strings; sparklers and party poppers; auspicious fruit (mandarins, peaches, stuff with Chinese names that I don’t recognize) in large quantities. A trip to Chinatown is mind-blowing any time; right now you can go blind from all the red and gold.
I’ve bought some Lunar New Year greeting cards, and scanned in the front of one, just as a sample. Click on it to see it in detail.
Lunar New Year Card
“What does it all mean?” I hear you cry. Here’s what I can find out: Fish in Mandarin is “yu,” which sounds like the Mandarin for “Abundance.” Round gold or red fruit is auspicious, so we have a lucky orange. Pineapples are symbols of wealth and prosperity. That gold thing on the right is an ancient form of money – an ingot of gold (they also used to come in silver). So basically it wishes you a very prosperous abundant and fortunate new year.
You will be pleased to know that all the Singapore branches of MacDonalds are advertising their seasonal “Mega Prosperity Burger.” From the pictures it seems to be an extra-long hoagie bun filled from end to end with an elongated hamburger. Very un-Chinese and un-Singaporean cuisine baptised for the local market.