Photographs from the eight night of Chinese New Year – when the Hokkiens gather to welcome the Heavenly Jade Emperor. The occasion this year was graced by the fire dragon of Sar Kong, who paid a visit to the Singapore Yu Huang Gong.
More on the Hokkien practice :
And, on the Fire Dragon of Sar Kong :
The arrival of spring, celebrated as the Chinese New Year, brings colour to the streets of Singapore’s Chinatown. Marked these days by a street light up, the anticipation of the festival also sees a host of events and activities as well as the crowd pulling Chinatown Chinese New Year Street Bazaar offering new year delicacies and must-haves, and an invasion of rats this year for the Year of the Rat.
Trengganu Street last weekend.
Anticipating the arrival of spring in Chinatown.
Rats have invaded for the Year of the Rat.
Heritage & Food Trail
Always a hit, the nightly stage shows run from 8 to 10.30 pm from 4 to 24 January 2020 at Kreta Ayer Square, opened each night with a lion dance performance. Another well received activity is the Heritage & Food Trail, which takes participants on a historical and cultural tour through the streets of Chinatown, culminating with a feast of Cantonese delights at Singapore’s largest hawker centre, Chinatown Complex Food Centre. Tickets for the trail, which run on 11, 12, 18 and 19 January, can be purchased at Kreta Ayer Community Club at $15/- per participant or online (with a 10% discount) at:
11 Jan : https://go.gov.sg/heritagefoodtrail11012020
12 Jan : https://go.gov.sg/heritagefoodtrail12012020
18 Jan : https://go.gov.sg/heritagefoodtrail18012020
19 Jan : https://go.gov.sg/heritagefoodtrail19012020
Food, glorious Cantonese food from some of the 200 food stalls in Chinatown Complex Food Centre.
Yes 933 deejays on the heritage and food trail.
Mural hunting during the heritage and food trial.
The “disneyfication” of Chinatown is complete.
A Walk through Temple Street
Photos of the always Colourful Street Bazaar
The highly anticipated annual Chinatown Street Light-up will be launched on Saturday 7 January 2016, kicking-off a seven-week long celebration in the precinct aimed at ushering in and celebrating the Chinese Year of the Rooster. This year’s light-up features the largest number of lanterns made for a Chinatown celebration – some 5,500 in all – including a centrepiece giant rooster that crows across the road on the divider between Eu Tong Sen Street and New Bridge Road at the streets’ meeting with Upper Cross Street.
The 13 metre tall rooster lantern with long tail feathers that crows every now and then.
Designed by students from the SUTD, the LED lit lanterns along the centre divider illustrate the stages in the life of the rooster and impart life’s values through the 55 roosters, 64 hens, 134 chicks and 56 golden eggs on display. In addition to this there are also 1000 peony flower lanterns along New Bridge Road and Eu Tong Sen Street and 4,100 peach blossom lanterns, 21 peach blossom trees and 90 lanterns along South Bridge Road. The crowing rooster, the centrepiece, measures 13 metres tall, 7 metres wide and with the inclusion of its tail feathers, 100 metres in length.
Lessons from the life of the rooster – along the centre divider between Eu Tong Sen Street and New Bridge Road.
Peonies over New Bridge Road.
Peach Blossoms over South Bridge Road.
In addition to the light-up, the Chinatown Chinese New Year Celebrations also feature the popular annual street bazaar, which will run from 6 to 27 January 2017. The bazaar will feature some 440 stalls, which will line Pagoda, Smith, Sago Temple and Trengganu Streets, offering festive goodies and decorations among other items and brings great atmosphere to the streets of Chinatown.
The giant rooster – seen at street level.
Chickens, chickens everywhere.
There is also a youthful theme being introduced to this year’s event with YouthEats @ Temple Street and YHFlea: Come Lepark edition. YouthEats will see 12 entrepreneurs with unique food offerings, while YHFlea, being held on 14 and 15 January, is a flea market that will feature 100 local brands and independent designer. Other activities to look out for are Walking Trails being held on 8, 14, 15, 21 and 22 January at 3.30 to 5.00 pm for which pre-registration is required at www.chinatownfestivals.sg, the Official Light-up and Opening Ceremony on 7 January, Nightly Stage Shows, the International Lion Dance Competition – for which more information can be found at http://chinatownfestivals.sg/chinatown-chinese-new-year-celebrations-2017/.
The best lion dance, dragon dance and giant flag performance on the streets of Singapore during the Chinese New Year takes place every year on the morning of the second day in front of Bao Sheng Trading at Eng Hoon Street. Photographs from this year’s performance follow:
Photographs from yesterday’s launch of Chinatown Celebrates Chinese New Year 2016 and Light-up at New Bridge Road. The especially colourful event, which was graced by President Tony Tan Keng Yam, officially opened the Chinatown Celebrates Chinese New Year more information on which can be found in a previous post: Monkeys, monkeys everywhere.
Monkeys, lots of them, promise to set Chinatown alight come Saturday. For 53 days, some 406 of them, in the form of lanterns, will add to the crowd of monkeys that is already very evident on the streets of Chinatown. The lanterns are part of a record setting display of 2688 lanterns that include ones depicting longevity in the form of peaches, prosperity in the abundance of gold zodiac coins and spring blossoms to celebrate the arrival of Spring and the lunar year of the Monkey. The lanterns on display, the centrepiece of which is a 12 metre tall peach tree, have all been hand-crafted and were designed in partnership with final-year students from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).
Monkeys have already invaded Chinatown in anticipation of the arrival Chinese new year of the monkey.
Monkey lanterns – some 406 of them will add to the monkey madness.
The twelve-metre tall peach tree lantern.
Along with the light-up, there will also be much to look forward to during this year’s Chinatown Chinese New Year Celebrations. Organised by the Kreta Ayer – Kim Seng Citizens’ Consultative Committee, the lead up to the Chinese community’s main festival will see events involving the community, performances, a lion-dance competition and a festive bazaar and carnival. The lion dance competition (a ticketed event) features 14 teams from 8 countries will take place at Hong Lim Park on the weekend of 23-24 January.
There will be a lion dance competition to look forward to.
Along with performances that will feature both local and foreign performers.
The Festive Street Bazaar, which runs from 15 January to 7 February, is always well worth a walk through. Lining Pagoda, Smith, Temple and Trengganu Streets – much as the street and festive markets of old Chinatown did, the bazaar adds much to the festive atmosphere. This bazaar will see some 440 stalls this year and on offer will be a range of festive goods such as decorative items and traditional delicacies and snacks.
The Festive Street Bazaar, where items such as traditional Chinese New Year snacks can be purchased, will feature 440 stalls.
Stalls already stocked to welcome the year of the Monkey.
More monkeys in evidence.
Colour will also be added to Kreta Ayer Square. Nightly stage performances featuring festive songs, cultural music and dance will be held from 8 to 10.30 pm. Other modern interpretations of the celebration include a “Mother Tree” that will respond to postings on social media. Set up by students from the SUTD on the Garden Bridge, the pink tree reacts to every count of 18 posts on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter that are hash-tagged #CNY2016SG, and give an 18 second show of lights. Another “tree”, the Wishing Tree at Chinatown Point, is where one’s wishes can be hung. Wishing cards are available at $2 each and proceeds will be donated to the Kreta Ayer Seniors ‘ Activity Centre.
The Mother Tree.
There will also be an attempt to recall the traditions of our forefathers – in an exhibition, My Father Tongue. This would be held at the newly revamped Chinatown Heritage Centre from 28 January to 6 March 2016. The exhibition will look at the three main Chinese dialect influenced sub-cultures in Singapore and their festive practices. There would also be dialect workshops conducted during the period of the exhibition.
Dr Lily Neo, Grassroots Adviser and MP for Jalan Besar GRC, penning her wishes at the Wishing Tree.
The celebrations 2016 and the light-up will be launched on 16 January 2016. The event will see a retelling of “Journey to the West” that will involve both local and foreign performers Fireworks and firecrackers are expected at both this an at the Chinese New Year Countdown Party on 7 February. More information on the events can be found at http://chinatownfestivals.sg/chinatown-chinese-new-year-celebrations-2016/.
The arrival of spring, commemorated by the Chinese by the celebration of the new year, brings much colour and life to the streets of the “Greater Town”, tua poh, as it was known as to the local population. Besides the street market – long a popular source of goods necessary to welcome in the new year, the area since 1985, has also been livened up by the illuminations of an annual Chinese New Year light-up.
No horse run – this year’s light-up is perhaps light years ahead …
Crowds thronging the street market this year.
I managed to take in the festive atmosphere on the streets, packed with crowds that the weekend before the new year brings, but not before I attended a rather interesting sharing session on the celebration of Chinese New Year held at the URA Centre. Entitled “Cakap Heritage: All About Chinese New Year in Kreta Ayer / Chinatown” and jointly organised by the Singapore Heritage Society (SHS) and the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), the session provided a view not just of how the festival in years past would have been celebrated in the area, but also of the many ways in which Chinese New Year was observed all across Singapore through the recollections of several of the session’s participants.
A bus passenger The an gazes out at the festive light-up. The annual light-up is now a spectacle not to be missed.
One topic that was discussed at length during the session was shopping. Besides shopping for festive goodies, cards and decorations, Chinese New Year is also when new clothes and shoes – a must for every Chinese, are bought. For some it would be the only occasion to splurge on a new outfit and while many had theirs tailored, clothes for children were often bought from the Tua Poh street market – although as one former Changi Village resident did testify, shopping wasn’t necessarily confined to the streets of Chinatown.
Festive goodies on offer at the street market.
A seemingly popular shop to buy shoes from, was the Phoenix Shoes Company, located in a shophouse along South Bridge Road. Although the shop wasn’t one I was familiar with, it did bring back memories of another shoe shop – further east along South Bridge Road, from which my parents got their shoes from. That shop, the Crane Shoe Store, is one I well remember for how a light green box in which the pair of shoes in the size desired, would come rushing down a chute from the store room above – almost without delay whenever the shop assistant shouted an order out.
The streets of the greater town come alive in the lead-up to Chinese New Year.
Other experiences ranged from the buying gold jewellery (On Choeng – a goldsmith on South Bridge Road, seemed a popular choice), to waxed products and ducks eggs. A name synonymous with the prelude to Chinese New Year these days, Lim Chee Guan – known for the long queues for what is today a must-have Chinese New Year treat, bak kwa or long yuk (sometimes translated to pork jerky or barbecued dried pork), did also get a mention. A participant did make the observation that queues would have been non-existent back in the 1950s – when it would be difficult for many. Another luxury mentioned was feasting on bats – something that a restaurant by the name of Oriental in the 1950s, was along with monkeys and squirrels, apparently quite well known for.
Shoppers at the street market.
One the subject of luxuries, mention was also made of how for some of the less well-off folks – such as the Samsui women, Chinese New Year would be one of the rare, if not only occasion on which they would put meat, in the form of chicken, on the table, saving through the year to do so. The mention of chicken does take me back to the Chinese New Years of my early childhood, when the second day involved visiting a family friend who helped on a chicken farm in old Punggol – besides the squealing of pigs for their supper and perhaps an unfortunate incident in which I swallowed a loose teeth biting into an ang ku kueh, a memory that does linger from those visits is the sight of a headless chicken bound for the pot, scampering around on the sandy ground.
The colour of gold.
A consequence of the decades of social engineering in Singapore, is perhaps the loss of the use of the Chinese dialects, along with dialect group specific cultural practices such as was observed in the celebrations of yesteryear. Besides dialect group specific such as the Hokkien practice of Bai Ti Gong (honouring the Jade Emperor) still seen today, there are dialect group specific practices that have been adopted by the wider community such as the tossing of raw fish salad, yu sheng – a widely practiced Chinese New Year custom now in Singapore. This was confined initially to the Cantonese – a gentleman recalled his first experience of it that went back to 1955. Other dialect group specific practices included taboos associated with Chinese New Year such as not sweeping the floor, and not throwing rubbish out of the house on the first days of the new year.
A young shopper.
One practice that was common across the community was letting-off firecrackers. The thunderous burst of noise, the acrid smell of gunpowder that lingered in the air and the sea of red paper that littered the streets, would not be something the younger folks would of course remember. Firecrackers which were banned after 1972 in Singapore – the first modern version of the Chingay parade organised in 1973 was offered as to compensate for that. These were however very much an integral part of the celebration before the ban and several of the participants did share experiences from the 1950s and 1960s, before the ban kicked in, such as how as girls they would not dare venture out on their own out of fear of mischievous boys would would lie in wait to scare the girls by throwing lighted crackers at them.
Scenes from Chinese New Years of days gone by … the smell of gun powder and smoke that filled the air, and the sea of red left behind …. (source: National Archives, http://www.archivesonline.nas,sg).
Still on the subject of firecrackers, a Danish couple shared how it was also common practice to let off crackers for the new year. Firecrackers are known there as “Chinese” – the smaller ones “one-cent Chinese” and the larger ones “two-cent Chinese” – a reference possibly to the origins of firecrackers.
Preserved fruits on offer.
Without the sound of firecrackers going off through the night, and perhaps with the distractions of the modern world and the dilution of cultural practices, Chinese New Year does seem a quieter affair these days. Chinese New Year, is however, very much still an occasion for the family to gather – the family reunion dinner is still very much an important part of the celebration for many families. And if one does brave the crowds on the streets of the Greater Town, streets that while perhaps are over sanitised and modernised, are where one does discover that the spirit of Chinese New Years past is one that is very much alive in the present.
A view over the sanitised Chinatown and the modern city that has grown around it.
A view of the busy New Bridge Road with the galloping horses of the light-up.
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Featuring 160 ‘secret’ spots in Singapore, Secret Singapore is a guide on which I had the pleasure of working on with Heidi Sarna.
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Together with 9 other bloggers and thanks to Tigerair Philippines and the Philippine Department of Tourism, I found myself on a dream trip to Boracay in July 2013. Read about the fantastic experience I had at Boracay Island Escapade or on my blog.
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Macau Tower Fireworks! Streets of Happiness Wine, Fast Cars and Butterflies Where old meets new The House of Dancing Water Sky 21, a Luxury Destination Minus 8 degrees Celcius in Macau Coloane Village and Egg Tarts Colours of Macau Taipa, Food Street and Pork Chop Buns----------
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4 Days in Hong Kong
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The Long and Winding Road 