It has been 7 years since I last celebrated Chinese New Year the right way – with my family. To be honest, I have forgotten how to celebrate it. Was it the time when we travelled far to eat a lot, to see lots of extended family (I had to do a mental revision of who is who and how to properly address them before I arrived at my grandparents’ house), to be without a computer and internet and therefore resorted to trashy Chinese New Year radio and television shows?
Ah, yes, that was the memory, when we never used to have satellite television at home, Chinese New Year was the one rare occasion where we could watch something more exciting – Singapore TV channels (as hometown was close enough to Singapore to receive its TV signals). There was MediaCorp Channel 8 with the series and programmes all in (Singaporean/Malaysian) Mandarin rather than Cantonese, and Channel 5 with non-stop programmes and movies in English.
There was the time where they banned fireworks and fire crackers, and we could only play the baby version of pop-pop’s – I was secretly relieved, as I was slightly terrified by lighting up the former and never too amazed by them either.