Tonight is the last day of the Chinese New Year and most families will wrapped up the New Year with a big reunion dinner. We have our dinner just now with traditional spring roll (more like a salad topled with peanuts, crackers and fish flakes all roll in a thin flat floured pancakes. It is delicious as my mum is the expert in this Hokien traditional dish. I ate four rolls and seven piety cup. This is a health meal with lots and lots of vegetables.
Many seems to lament the fact that many in China fighting to get home for Chinese New Year holidays, many in Singapore are “fighting” to get away. Our Prime Minister is calling to “preserve the filial ties and bonds that hold our family units together” by spending time for reunion. While this calling is noble and appropriate at this time of the year where family bonding is an important however it does not necessarily take on traditional forms.
I have experienced each reunion dinner with joy, pain and regrets at time. Many of my brothers, sisters, sister in law, nephew and grown up nieces were dressed in their best.
Here we were, me and my sister will had to slave tireless behind the stove. I will be cooking, steaming, broiling, grilling and my sister will be dicing, chopping and opening tins and cans of abalone, button mushroom and bamboo shoots. Our preparation started 2 weeks before Chinese New Year. We will spent hours after office work to clean, wash and soaked the shark fins (we do not eat shark fins if we could help it after watching the documentary show on how the crew hand cut off the fins and kicked out the shark body still shivering from the pain), sea cucumber. I will have to list down the menu and worked out what to prepare and store on countdown days. What to cook first in and last out dishes so that everybody get to eat hot dishes. It was year after year of nightmares when everyone will as usual came at the perfect timing when the dinner is ready to serve. No one came to our rescue, with the usual excuses of spring cleaning the house and last minute shopping of buying flowers for table decorations.
No one offered to cook for the year’s reunion and we cooked and cooked and cooked until two years after Dad’s mourning period was over, I decided to take a bold step and knocked at the door of the travel agent as early as November/December period. I reserved a short holidays for three during the Chinese New Year’s period. We went away for nearby short getaway in Batam, Turi Beach for the first and second day of New Year.
As usual, we are expected to cook the reunion dinner and because it was an early morning boat trip, we suggested that reunion dinner ended early for trip preparation.
Subsequently the following year, it was also a short trip and the third year it was a long trip following the start and end of the New year period. The first few years, my family members could not accepted the “fighting” to get away, now they expected us to get away during the New year. Somehow it settled in their minds that reunion dinner is no longer a traditional of family bonding. For me, the reunion dinner has lost its purposes and meaning, the ones who do not helped in the dinner preparation get to enjoy the union and the poor chef me has to slave and ultimately when I get to sit down to eat my dinner it was way past 8 pm. I was too tired to eat and it was as usual plain rice with soup poured into it and ate them quickly just to satisfy the groaning stomach. My leg was swollen from standing at the stove, creating 10 to 12 dishes on large portions for thirty persons coming to dinner. The thought of it still send shudders down my shoulder.
I wondered how I managed all these years, it is such a relief now.
Breaking away from traditional does comes with a price to pay, some of my family members were too upset with me and relationship is distant now. Relationship is about caring and show concern on one and another but not to take other for granted, and definitely it is not about “food” all the time. Family bonding is not about get together to eat and eat, it can be visiting one another and sitting down with a cup of good coffee. It can also be time for my brothers and sisters to show their hospitalities to poor me and sister who had been cooking all these year, to take a good rest and enjoy New year as it meant to be. Nothing of these initiatives came at all.
All these years besides reunion dinner, I organized dinner get together, birthday parties and it was always me who will foot the whole party bills. No one offered to pit in their shares and if I suggested equal portion to be shared by everyone, no one was keen.
So, besides reunion dinner, I skipped dinner get together and birthdays and all.
These days, I reserve get to together dinners and Japanese sushi hand roll dinner for special few family members. Dinners will be on seasonal food available from the gourmet supermarket and special air flown item as it is for special people in my life. Generous portion of food and because the group is small, I can get to sit down to eat together, that is what I enjoy best. To cook for small group is something which I enjoy doing these years, where food can be cooked from stove to the table. There is time for desserts, coffee and conversation through the night.
There are people like me experiencing this evolution in their own family with the gradual passing on of older folks. Coupled with small family, sometime they are the only one left in Singapore. Take for example Anthony : over the past few years I have had fewer and fewer relatives to visit, with none for the past couple of years. My own sibling configuration has also evolved, with a deceased sister, a brother-in-laws in Malaysia, and one brother with two married daughters in United States. My older son lives in London with his wife. Reunion dinner on Chinese New Year’s Eve has been reduced to connection with only one brother and his family, my younger son in Singapore.
I suppose this sort of change must be happening to other families here, as older folk pass on and nuclear families remain small in size. From what I have observed, most of those who do get away are families spending time together away from Singapore. It is their form of family bonding (how wonderful that at least some on understood my intention of getting away, though mine real motive is to get away from organizing the reunion dinner). In this sense, we must expect family bonding to take place in different forms. May we not lament what is happening to family traditions during Chinese New Year period. Instead, let us embrace the inevitable change that is taking place that binds families together regardless of where and when this may occur.
I have experienced each reunion dinner with joy, pain and regrets at time. Many of my brothers, sisters, sister in law, nephew and grown up nieces were dressed in their best.
Here we were, me and my sister will had to slave tireless behind the stove. I will be cooking, steaming, broiling, grilling and my sister will be dicing, chopping and opening tins and cans of abalone, button mushroom and bamboo shoots. Our preparation started 2 weeks before Chinese New Year. We will spent hours after office work to clean, wash and soaked the shark fins (we do not eat shark fins if we could help it after watching the documentary show on how the crew hand cut off the fins and kicked out the shark body still shivering from the pain), sea cucumber. I will have to list down the menu and worked out what to prepare and store on countdown days. What to cook first in and last out dishes so that everybody get to eat hot dishes. It was year after year of nightmares when everyone will as usual came at the perfect timing when the dinner is ready to serve. No one came to our rescue, with the usual excuses of spring cleaning the house and last minute shopping of buying flowers for table decorations.
No one offered to cook for the year’s reunion and we cooked and cooked and cooked until two years after Dad’s mourning period was over, I decided to take a bold step and knocked at the door of the travel agent as early as November/December period. I reserved a short holidays for three during the Chinese New Year’s period. We went away for nearby short getaway in Batam, Turi Beach for the first and second day of New Year.
As usual, we are expected to cook the reunion dinner and because it was an early morning boat trip, we suggested that reunion dinner ended early for trip preparation.
Subsequently the following year, it was also a short trip and the third year it was a long trip following the start and end of the New year period. The first few years, my family members could not accepted the “fighting” to get away, now they expected us to get away during the New year. Somehow it settled in their minds that reunion dinner is no longer a traditional of family bonding. For me, the reunion dinner has lost its purposes and meaning, the ones who do not helped in the dinner preparation get to enjoy the union and the poor chef me has to slave and ultimately when I get to sit down to eat my dinner it was way past 8 pm. I was too tired to eat and it was as usual plain rice with soup poured into it and ate them quickly just to satisfy the groaning stomach. My leg was swollen from standing at the stove, creating 10 to 12 dishes on large portions for thirty persons coming to dinner. The thought of it still send shudders down my shoulder.
I wondered how I managed all these years, it is such a relief now.
Breaking away from traditional does comes with a price to pay, some of my family members were too upset with me and relationship is distant now. Relationship is about caring and show concern on one and another but not to take other for granted, and definitely it is not about “food” all the time. Family bonding is not about get together to eat and eat, it can be visiting one another and sitting down with a cup of good coffee. It can also be time for my brothers and sisters to show their hospitalities to poor me and sister who had been cooking all these year, to take a good rest and enjoy New year as it meant to be. Nothing of these initiatives came at all.
All these years besides reunion dinner, I organized dinner get together, birthday parties and it was always me who will foot the whole party bills. No one offered to pit in their shares and if I suggested equal portion to be shared by everyone, no one was keen.
So, besides reunion dinner, I skipped dinner get together and birthdays and all.
These days, I reserve get to together dinners and Japanese sushi hand roll dinner for special few family members. Dinners will be on seasonal food available from the gourmet supermarket and special air flown item as it is for special people in my life. Generous portion of food and because the group is small, I can get to sit down to eat together, that is what I enjoy best. To cook for small group is something which I enjoy doing these years, where food can be cooked from stove to the table. There is time for desserts, coffee and conversation through the night.
There are people like me experiencing this evolution in their own family with the gradual passing on of older folks. Coupled with small family, sometime they are the only one left in Singapore. Take for example Anthony : over the past few years I have had fewer and fewer relatives to visit, with none for the past couple of years. My own sibling configuration has also evolved, with a deceased sister, a brother-in-laws in Malaysia, and one brother with two married daughters in United States. My older son lives in London with his wife. Reunion dinner on Chinese New Year’s Eve has been reduced to connection with only one brother and his family, my younger son in Singapore.
I suppose this sort of change must be happening to other families here, as older folk pass on and nuclear families remain small in size. From what I have observed, most of those who do get away are families spending time together away from Singapore. It is their form of family bonding (how wonderful that at least some on understood my intention of getting away, though mine real motive is to get away from organizing the reunion dinner). In this sense, we must expect family bonding to take place in different forms. May we not lament what is happening to family traditions during Chinese New Year period. Instead, let us embrace the inevitable change that is taking place that binds families together regardless of where and when this may occur.
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