Ramblings About My Life..

The Chinese New Year Is Coming!

This is going to be another first for me - celebrating Chinese New Year away thousands of miles away from home. All this while, my Chinese New Years have been celebrated without fail in the idyllic little town called Kota Tinggi, surrounded by my family. Come this year, however, I will be celebrating it in a not-so-idyllic city called Sheffield, located right in the English Midlands. No more tonnes of bak kua that my family buys every time. Gone are the litres of Shandy I drown myself in each year. There's not even the slightest sign of the pineapple tarts and kuih kapit that I love so much. No more 120-decibel-karaoke by my relatives and the Chinese New Year songs blaring out perpetually from the idiot box - wait, I actually don't miss those all that much....hahaha! Worst of all is the fact that not a Mandarin orange is in sight!

Despite the fact that the absence of the usual Chinese New Year goodies has dealt a rather severe emotional blow to me (hahaha....try going a year without your favourite foodstuffs and you'll pretty much grasp my point!), the absence of my family is probably the factor that will make me feel it most come the 28th of this month. To be perfectly honest with you, I've never viewed the Chinese New Year as "family time". I've always seen it as just another holiday, albeit one spent with my relatives. I've even perceived of it as a chore of sorts since each year I usually end up lazing around, watching television and eating endlessly. It was only halfway through my flight back to the United Kingdom that the thought suddenly hit me - I wouldn't be seeing any of my relatives for at least another 6 months. How thick can I be? It took a flight halfway around the world to finally knock some sense into me!

Chinese New Year is the only time I actually get to spend with my grandmother, uncles, aunts and cousins, whom I seldom see the rest of the year. Although it is definitely possible for me to visit them when I return to Malaysia for the summer vacations, not everyone will be around then. My relatives have their own lives to lead as well. My cousins will probably be away working and my uncles and aunties likely to be involved in their businesses. I've never realized the true significance of Chinese New Year - the scattered Yee family actually gathers in a single location for a couple of days! It's the only time of the year when I look around myself and can see the whole Yee family in the same dining room, eating and chatting away. It's also the only time of the year I actually get confused as to which title is used for a particular uncle or aunt - the complexity of the Mandarin titles for uncles and aunts of different degrees make it impossible for me to remember them completely!

However, inasmuch as I'm going to miss the good old times when Chinese New Year was celebrated back home, all is not lost. I've got a group of friends here as well, and we'll probably be celebrating the Chinese New Year together. The Chinese New Year will probably come and go before I even realize it - I have assignments, revision and the occasional party to fully occupy my time! My mum always used to comment that I never get homesick no matter how far away I am from home - well, Mum, you're absolutely right, this is about as close to homesickness as I get! Haha!

posted by yong chen @ 9:55 PM