Festival!

What are festivals? There are lots of festivals in Malaysia because we have many different religions. This week is a festival week for the Chinese in Malaysia! Are Chinese New Year and this year the first day of Chinese New Year fall on the same day with Valentine’s Day? Chinese New Year is a big day for all the Chinese in Malaysia. Before a month of Chinese New Year, every family starts to clean and decorate their house with red lantern, flowers, and all kind of red color stuff. The Chinese New Year song are play every where including the shopping centre and restaurants.

Few months before the Chinese New Year, I’d started to buy my new clothes. It is a must for us to wear new clothes during Chinese New Year and we are not allowed to wear black color clothings. Everyone wears their new clothings and back to their hometown for Chinese New Year celebration. On the first day of Chinese New Year, a reunion dinner will be held on every family and all the family member suppose to go back home for the dinner. Most of the family will eat a dish called ‘yee sang’. We need to mix all the ingredient of the food (yee sang) by chopsticks. All the food we eat during Chinese New Year has its own meaning, like mandarin orange means gold because of the Cantonese sound of it and the ‘yee sang’ I’d mentioned it means ‘good luck’.

All the kids will get red packet from the adults, we called it as ‘ang pow’. We are not allowed to sweep the floor on the first day of Chinese New Year because it is a tradition. During the olden days, sweeping the floor means sweeping away those good luck out from the house. Some of them will visit their relatives and friends during the first day but mostly will only visit on the second day. We try all types of cookies, candy, mandarin orange, drinks and play while visiting relative’s house. Get to meet all the relatives whom went overseas for further studies or work.

This year is not a good year for me because I’m sick during the Chinese New Year Eve and until now I’m not recover yet. How pathetic! But we still love Chinese New Year, aren’t we? :)