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| A traditional lion dance at one of the Chinese temples we vistied |
My first ever Chinese New Year celebrations. I wore my red dress, packed specifically for a holiday I knew nothing about. And here I am, what seems like endless honey mandarins later and lots of angpau richer, finished with day 1 of two weeks of celebrations.
Here in Sabah, Chinese New Year is bigger than Christmas. Because my Western self didn't know what to look for, I had figured the completely red shops in the beginning of January were remnant of Christmas. The lanterns everywhere were a nice touch of festiveness.
And then I was informed by one of my kids that it was for Chinese New Year. Duh.
It was right after that when the kids started learning new Chinese songs, and we had an afternoon of intense gotong-royong (team work - aka clean every inch of the property). Then Jireh home was ready for the New Year.
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| Angpau! |
As visitors came for the holidays, we accumulated boxes and boxes of mandarin oranges, a sign of good fortune or prosperity or luck? (I'm still unsure of the actual meaning of a lot of the traditions) For a while, I ate at least four of them a day. The visitors also brought angpau, which is money in a little red envelope given to single people/kids/elderly. In a naive move, I tried to pass my first angpau to one of the kids who was still waiting to receive some. They thought I was crazy and refused to accept. While I definitely received a lot of angpau, the kids make bank over Chinese New Year and are so excited to go into town and spend some of it!
Then there was the reunion dinner. I was invited to my neighbor's/landlord's house on New Year's Eve for what I thought was a party. But instead it was just a dinner, where the whole family - all five of the grown children and thier kids had dinner. But it was a feast. The long table was full of traditional delicacies that I was given generous portions of. I don't remember any names or descriptions, but I was pleasantly surprised at how good even the weirdest looking things were. After crashing the famiy dinner, I pulled an orang putih (white person) and went to bed early, instead of staying up late with the neighbors. I was exhausted because Jireh Home spent the day at the beach with a group of visitors.
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| Beach day activities - Orang Sabah style introductions |
I learned from one of the young men in the group that they all graduated from the same high school in KK, most of them in the same class. Now they are from all over the region, but were home for the holidays and wanted to do some charity work. So some how they found Jireh Home, and planned an elaborate morning of activities at the beach. As the six groups of staff and students raced to complete all of the stations they set up around the beach, I got sunburned, making my face a seasonally appropriate shade of red... But it was a really fun day. We went back to Jireh Home for lunch together, ate KFC, sang and danced together. If I'm not mistaken, some of the group even cried when they left. I'm working on counting the visitors as the blessing they truly are for us here, instead of questioning their motives. This beach day made that incredibly easy to do.
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| Chinese New Year dinner with some of the girls |
So on this, the first day of Chinese New Year, we (Jireh Home), were the guests of honor at a neighbor's house for dinner. They served so many delicious things. Buy my favorite by far was homemade pizza. So we feasted in our best red clothes with new friends, looking forward to the next three days of school holidays.
