Chinese New Year celebration in Australia

Dear friends, William in Adelaide has kindly contributed another article about the CNY celebration in Adelaide.

Chinese New Year celebration in Australia

You must be interested in how Chinese New Year celebration is in Australia. Unlike Malaysia where everybody is busy decorating, cleaning the house and preparation for the new year eve dinner, there is no such culture here among the Chinese. The Chinese who stayed long here might have forgotten the traditional Chinese New Year. Last December, I experience the Christmas celebration in Australia and I found it very similar to how we celebrate Chinese New Year. Some people are taking three weeks leave for the Christmas and shopping centres are open until mid night in the week before Christmas. Family members came back for the Christmas eve dinner like we are having the new year eve reunion dinner.

I am lonely this year as my family is still in Malaysia. The new year eve morning happens to be Saturday morning and I visited the Adelaide Convention Centre as I read from a news article that Sarawak Government sent a group of developers (CMSB), Architect (KDI) and Engineer (Minsar) to visit Adelaide Convention centre in 2004 while they are planning for the Sarawak Convention Centre. Below is a photo of Adelaide Convention Centre that I took from River Torrens and a black swan which swim in the river. Is the proposed Sarawak Convention Centre resemble Adelaide Convention Centre?

I called up Pastor Ling who is same year as us in Sacred Heart Last Friday stating my intention to participate in the Church New Year Eve dinner on Saturday night. I brought two pizzas as everyone has to contribute one dish. The weather inside the hall is very hot and I believe it is above 40 degree Celcius. About half the members who participate are from Sibu. The rest are from China, Singapore etc. A church member who run a restaurant here donated two big plates of “Lau Seng”. The restaurant owner name is Ah Loke and he is three or four years our senior at Sacred Heart. There were good food and interesting sharing. Instead of celebrating a family based reunion dinner, we have a group reunion dinner.

Sorry for the poor quality of the photo as I took it with my hand phone. There was an introduction to the history of Chinese New Year and Pastor Ling talked about “God of fortune” and “Why nobody every see the wife of God of fortune” which was very interesting. The dinner and sharing section after that were good but the heat was unbearable. I left the party earlier as it was getting really too hot.

The weather on Sunday is getting chiller following a cool change in the afternoon. I was having dinner with my principle engineer who is a Singaporean and his Singaporean Malay friend. Singaporean Malay are open and we shared our view on regional politics, culture etc which was very interesting. There were Lion dance inside the restaurant as well as in the street of China Town. The Lion dance performers are not Chinese. They are Aussie! The Lion was collecting Ang Poh from the patrons.

Well, this is my little story on my Chinese New Year experience. Tell me yours.