Hello! Singapore Tours | Chinese New Year
The Lunar New Year is one of China’s most important festivals; it’s the festival of red and gold, traditions and customs, auspicious and auspices; but most importantly rest, celebration and family time.
We touched base with 4 of our guides; Su Ling, Gee Soo, Dan and Janice to find out how they are celebrating their Chines New Year (CNY).
Su Ling: The most important event for Su Ling is the reunion lunch held on CNY eve, where the family get together with a lot of delicious food - from roast duck, soya sauce chicken, fish maw soup and vegetables. To settle down in the evening she planned to watch CNY programmes.
On the first CNY year day, Su Ling will be enjoying a second important lunch with family, where together they will be cooking chicken soup, fried prawn, fried fish with sausages and flavoured rice and finally ending it off with pineapple tart, prawn roll, kuih bahulu and kue lapis over much needed bonding and conversation.
The remainder of the CNY was spent relaxing at home; by no means on an empty stomach. Su Ling ended the CNY enjoying Lor Hei, roast pork, Hor Fun, Fried Yam Paste, braised chicken feet and Chee Cheong Fun (steam rice roll filled with prawn).
Kuih Bahulu - main ingredients being wheat flour, eggs, sugar and baking powder. These cakes are slightly crusty on the outer layer but soft on the inside. Example photo taken form the internet.
‘Hor Fun’ is a flat rice noodle with egg gravy. Photo by Su Ling.
Kue Lapis - lapis meaning layers, is cake made of rice flour, sago, coconut mil, sugar, salt and food colouring. It has a bouncy texture, quite sticky and chewy. Example photo taken from the internet.
‘Lor Hei’ in Cantonese means tossing up for good fortune. As it is being mixed, it is being tossed for good fortune. Photo by Su Ling
Gee Soo: Many of Gee Soo’s family are living in Malaysia, a stone throw away from Singapore and yet with restrictions in place, so far away. Thankfully with an alternative in hand, on CNY eve Gee Soo enjoyed a virtual reunion dinner with his family.
On the first morning of CNY, other than connecting with is family over technology, Gee Soo prepared for the National Gallery of Singapore assessment next week. All of the best Gee Soo!
Thankfully, it is’t all about burning the midnight oil, on the second day of CNY, Gee Soo is hosting a Zoom Tour for a young guest in California - one of 3 consecutive Zoom Tours in Hello! Tours (Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo). Having an alternative is always good, however we long for the atmosphere of a Hello! Singapore Food Tour or an emersive Hello! Singapore History and Culture Tour. we hope the virtual world we’ve gotten to know over this pandemic is only temporary and in its final days.
Ending the celebration with an early morning nature walk and wishing everyone an “Ox-picious Year!”.
Gee Soo wordplaying in this ‘Ox-picious’ CNY video.
Instead of waiting around for the revival of tourism, Dan is not only a tour guide for Hello! Singapore Tours, he is also a vey talented musician. Besides visiting with friends on CNY’s day, he’d been scouting locations for video creation to compliment the release of his new song called ‘Chicken Rice’. Chicken Rice can be found on Spotify, head over there and support Dan in his musical endeavour. We wish Dan all the best and look forward to seeing the Chicken Rice music video.
I am wondering if ‘Chicken Rice’ has anything to do with Dan missing the hawker centre on our Hello! Singapore Food Tour.
Dan’s ‘Chicken Rice’ can be found on Spotify.
Janice had the fun task of wrapping ‘angboa’ (red packet), these are red in colour and symbolises good luck and warding off evil spirits. It is also gifted when visiting as a kind gesture.
As with many people, this year for Janice is very much a ’toned down’ celebration, but still incorporating reunion dinners with immediate family.
‘Angbao’ wrapped by Janice