Welcoming the Spring Festival

As we the Chinese Diaspora join the great Malaysian exodus known as balik kampung, the Spring Festival always brings to mind memories of years past, on how so much has changed, and also some things that have stayed the same.

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When we were small, every Chinese New Year was spent at my grandmother’s house in Melaka. During New Year, she hung a red cloth over the top and sides of the doorway – a tradition that is peculiar only to a few clans around here. But the cloth was a bit short, it hung down only half way beside the doorway, my Grandma always told me that cloth was measured for the door of her old house, a wooden house in the shanty town beside the river, torn down before i was born.

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Exodus traffic is still the same though, even with the modern PLUS highway. Whenever we travelled from Johor to my mother’s hometown in Batu Gajah, we’d start early in the morning and only reach late in the evening. Travelling on a single lane trunk road all the way in the old days (except the short stretch of highway between Seremban and KL) was treacherous but fun.

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Those days, my mom used to make lots of cookies to sell during Chinese New Year. She’d make kuih kapit, banana chips, pineapple tarts and assorted dough cookies. Sometimes we’d be asked to help with the production line, which always inadvertently resulted in me getting shouted at.

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When we were small the going rate of angpow was about RM2 (unless you were family). But we had this really rich aunt who lived in a double storey bungalow in PJ, she’d always give RM1.20 in the angpow. Yes, coins. She put coins in the angpow 🙂

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So to all my friends, Kung Hei Fat Choy. And drive safely.