CNY - Singapore

All hands required on deck today. Streets and shops noticeably vacant, especially of maids: the clearest hint of the New Year preparations. All leave cancelled. Those who receive a free Sunday from their employer will be prevailed upon one way or another today. (In the case of the Chinese at least.) There will be storms cooked up through the course of the day. Culinary writers will give those details. Something called yusheng seems to be part of the tradition. Judging from a number of photographs in the newspaper, noodles of a particular kind (vegetarian "prosperity salad"), which in get-togethers are "tossed" with the other ingredients in company with those nearest and dearest. (In days prior pics of the President and his Lady gracing homeless shelters; in the usual promotion of ecumenicalism, today a media event of the same in an Indian temple &etc.) 
         The maids will be busy with the spring cleaning too, not to be left for the last minute. As in other traditions, a new clean start to the year ahead. After the winter and the year past, renewal: cleanliness of the house and peace, order and forgiveness in the household.
         The maids who have fortune on their side will get a month's NY bonus in their little red packet. Less fortunate may get a tenner or twenty. Some Chinese have even switched to the chief "bonus" coming at Christmas and only a token at NY.
         Junior family members usually receive a small amount; a superstitious even number: two dollars the bare minimum. Alfred the optometrist in Joo Chiat Complex will give his teenage sons a hundred crackers each; in a little parcel that reminds of the fire-crackers of old. (No one will be surprised: crackers are banned in SG without stamped approval, signed and dated by the relevant authorities.)
         Bigger than the hajji, the Roman Saturnalia festival, Chrissy and Ben Hur combined — on a global scale none other matches the pilgrimage of Chinese NY. This year as the diaspora, both internal and external, strove to return to their home-towns, records were set to be broken: three point two million trips predicted on trains, planes, buses and boats.
         Boxes of oranges have been mounting up at all the fruiterers in Geylang the past fortnight. "Mandarin" oranges specifically — a kind of in-between mandarin and orange. Somewhat larger and firmer - both the fruit and its casing - than our kind back home. Many are sold in prepacked plastic wrapping - an extra courtesy. (Fifty cents each; care as always needed in selection.) Ten days ago in the chief broadsheet newspaper, the Straits Times, a three quarter page advertisement from the Japan Food Export Co. for especially succulent, almost completely free of pips, luscious and juicy (sun ripened) mandarin oranges.
         GUM or KUM = orange in Cantonese; a homonym for "gold". More than enough reason to be taken as auspicious. Following the end of winter, plentiful in the orchards. In days of yore, before Orchard Road, the bright colour alone would have signified hopefulness.
         Again, pairs offered. When the parents are visited on NY morning, a pair of oranges is presented first of all. Only afterward does the red packet follow. The glowing orange orb a mini sun after all. Rather a difficult challenge for the contemporary imagination (obesity, gadgets, itunes, flatscreens &etc. &etc. And cameras of course.) The traditional cookies made by grandma might prove very difficult to present to the present-day youngster as a special yummy treat..
         Like church, temple visits have fallen away; together with vegetarianism. In place of the temple and prayer, more usually it is the mahjong board that comes out after lunch — for a spot of "dry swimming" (hands waved over the board, especially for a collect). Five cents a turn for starters. In the course of the day family tempers known to fray. Funny how the Chinese sound so familiar.
         The bright red long sleeved tee washed and ready for the morning, rain, hail or shine. Can't do new clothes on this budget travel, but intend to show the colour bright and early with the best of them.
         Happy CNY! (In all probability the dragon likely to meet the bald eagle not too far down the track.)
         .... Fair Price was closed tonight at 5pm. Not open at all tomorrow. The Post Office at Paya Lebar, regional HQ, at 1pm. (In the best tradition of the-post-must-get-through, from memory it was open Chrissy morning at least?) Nothing like it in almost seven and one half months. Far bigger than Chrissy; bigger than Good Friday easily. Nothing to compare. And all temporal holiness; the other kind entirely an add-on. You have to go back to mid October nearly a century ago for the benchmark; and CNY stretches a way further back. Shutters down through the whole of Joo Chiat. Now the natural allies the Malays and Indians and no one else.
         In our vacant streets back home one gets used to it. But here in this busy, practical, can-do anytime day-or-night town, everything-for-sale, the effect is something else.