Raining Mandarins

Boxed mandarins in bright red cardboard with gold lettering all across the town the last few days, standing over a metre and a half high. The supermarkets, the greengrocer, the street stalls along the roads and those within the markets. Mr. Lim at Haig Road hoped to move something like 2600 by CNY a week away. The contract Mr. Lim had with Popular Book-store accounted for about a quarter of his trade in the CNY mandarins. Each fruit was plastic wrapped and in the deluxe article sitting within its separate compartment in the box. $8-18 & 20 was the range at Haig Road. For NY Eve Mr. Lim would close up shop a half day. There would be little rest however. As the youngest who lived with his mother, the family would gather at Mr. Lim’s four-room HDB on the Eve and again over the following days. The elder siblings were all grandparents now, four sisters and a brother. Ninety guests altogether expected. Mrs. Lim would be busy in the run-up. Apart from Popular, who deliver boxes to the staff of schools they supply with stationery, two or three customers take around 200 boxes. The small Haig Road stall naturally could not manage such scale. Mr. Lim had an arrangement with his supplier to home deliver orders. The practice of mandarin gifts recalled our own Easter back home, Bab colouring her eggs on her stove with onion skins. More adept housewives achieved brighter colours with their secret methods—red, brilliant and violet blue and emerald—against which we offered our shamefully streaked brown. At the grounds of St. George in St. Albans Stevie Dakic won scores of eggs in the contests with his disguised wooden manufacture. Rather stupendous to consider there would be the odd child here still delighted to receive their own glossy mandarin from the chest delivered to the house on NY’s Eve. In the neighbourhood one had seen such children sitting patiently at the eatery tables, or walking in-hand with parents. Malay more often than not, but Chinese too. Gong xi gong xi gong xi ni. Happy New Year of the Horse.

 

 

 

                                                                                                Geylang Serai, Singapore