Chinese New Year Visiting

It was that time of the year where the family gets together and children get money from their relatives. It was Chinese New Year!

As a Chinese , the first thing to do was to give oranges to my parents. You must be wondering why we give fruits to our parents. Well, in cantonese, orange is pronounced as "kam" which sounds similar to the word for gold.


(Above) My cousin offering oranges.



(Above) Me offering oranges.



Therefore, when we give oranges to our parents, it represents wishing them prosperity for the new year.

The next thing we were supposed to do was to visit my grandparents house. Unfortunately, since both of my grandparents were DEAD , we went to the temple to pay our respects to them.

Well, most people would host a reunion party but we took the extra effort of visiting ALL of our relatives. It was like driving around the whole of singapore TWICE.

Most of the relatives we visited were not very familiar to me but oddly enough , they remembered my name and even my age!

To tell you the truth , most of the visits were quite boring for me as the adults would start talking about their own matters, leaving me and my cousins alone.
Most of my cousins are much older than me, some have even married! They too would start talking about their own things. With nothing much to do, I usually listen to my mp3 player or take a walk around the neighbourhood.


The last relative we had to visit was my first uncle . He's quite a friendly guy and pleasant to talk with. When we arrived at his place, his house was already packed with people so we had to sit outside. Our family must be really big because within 30 minutes , more guests arrived! I was surprised that we had so many relatives. It turns out that they were DISTANT relatives and couldn’t recognize most of our faces anyway.

After all the relatives had left, it was time for us to go for dinner. We stopped at a Peranakan restaurant and ordered Ayam Buahkeluak(Chicken) , Itek Sio(Duck) , Babi Ponteh(Pork) and a variety of delicious nyona favourites. After the meal, we say goodbye to my uncle and his family ( They came with us for dinner) and went our separate ways.

Back home when I finally opened all the hong paos I collected, I was amazed at how much money I received.


(Above) My Hong Paos!!!!!!

Having close to $300 was a good start to the year of the Ox!
After a great and tiring night, the whole family gathered in the living room for the countdown to the year of the Ox.

To the reader , I wish you a very happy Chinese New Year!