Gong Xi Fa Cai

There are a dozen animals in the Chinese zodiac, each one assigned to a calendar year on a 12 year cycle. Those born under the sign of the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit or whatever other animal in the zodiac are said to embody the characteristics and attributes of the animal which is assigned to the year of their birth. I'm a monkey. Monkeys are supposed to be well-rounded, witty, intelligent and deep thinkers. They are also supposed to have stable careers and do not trust others easily. Do with all that what you will but I like being a monkey.

Each spring, the arrival of the new year in the Chinese zodiac is celebrated all over southeast Asia in what is sometimes known as the Spring Festival. The exact date of the new year is based on both the position of the Sun in the Earth's sky and the moon phase, so it is not tied to a specific date the way our western new year celebration works. Some call the celebration Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year. Since the coming of the new year is celebrated beyond the borders of China, I'll be using the term Lunar New Year for the rest of this post, even though technically that's not even true because the celebration is based on a lunisolar calendar, not a lunar calendar. 

When we determined that 2024 was finally the year that we would make it Angkor Wat in Cambodia, we knew we would be visiting in the middle of winter to avoid the monsoon season (May through September) and the hottest and most humid months of the year (March through June) and that right before Christmas was probably not a great time to spend two plus weeks halfway around the world. We settled on February, which happened to be the time of the Lunar New Year celebration in 2024. This seemed like something we had to do.

Just not in Cambodia. 

We picked Singapore. 

Year of the Dragon, baby!!!!

2024 is the Year of the Dragon, which has to be about the coolest animal in the Chinese zodiac. Even as biased as I am towards monkeys, I have to go with Dragon as the best, Tiger as the second best and Monkey in the three spot. But this isn't about Monkeys. 2024 is all about the Dragon.

Unlike our new year celebrations here in the western world, the Lunar New Year celebrations are not confined to a single night. It's actually a 15 day long celebration. I'm not saying that people in the United States don't know how to celebrate the ringing in of a new year, but we spend all of maybe 8 or so hours maximum commemorating this event and that's usually if you are hosting a party or something. If you are a guest, you are probably in for a few hours less than that.

Lunar New Year celebrations are a time to reunite with families; remove clutter and baggage from your life and your home; and pray for good fortune and protection against evil. It is an event consisting of many intricate rituals and traditions which are respected and practiced correctly to maximize good luck for the coming 12 months or so. It's some serious business.

The primary impetus for this trip to Southeast Asia was without any doubt to finally visit Angkor Wat. Lunar New Year was a secondary attraction and it was supposed to be just that: secondary. But honestly, celebrating Lunar New Year was the best thing we did on this trip. It was such a privilege to be a part of something so ancient and revered that is so steeped in tradition and that builds and reinforces important connections between people and their cultures. Every moment we spent doing something related to the celebration of the new year was an important event. It was such a rich experience. 

I know we got a uniquely Singaporean Lunar New Year. There are traditions in that tiny island nation which do not appear in the celebrations in China or Vietnam or Malaysia or anywhere else in the world. That just added to the special-ness of this experience, even if we didn't stay for the whole thing or take in everything we possibly could have taken in. I think we clearly got enough to make this probably THE signature experience of our 2024 travel year. And we got it in the second month!! Not that I'm saying the rest of the year won't be great, but it's difficult to see anything topping this.

Here's what our slice of Lunar New Year looked like in 2024. Singapore-style.

River Hongbao

Singapore hosts two Lunar New Year celebrations that are unique to their country each year: River Hongbao and the Chingay Parade. Unfortunately for us, the Chingay Parade (which is sort of a deluxe talent show and parade in one and is clearly the biggest and most over-the-top celebration of Lunar New Year) is at the end of the 15 day celebration and we would already be back in the United States having finished the rest of our vacation by the time that kicked off. We figured when we were planning this trip that if we scheduled our trip around the actual New Year's Day, we'd be all set with all the good stuff. Turns out we were wrong. I'm not sure it mattered. We couldn't have realistically covered the entirety of Singapore's Lunar New Year celebration since we only get so much time off work. 

Stupid work...

So that left us with River Hongbao, a Singapore tradition since 1987 to celebrate Lunar New Year along the Singapore River. These days, it's held at the fabulous Gardens By The Bay and how cool it is seems very, very dependent upon when you go.

Here's how it works. 

Basically, a portion of the Gardens By The Bay park is cordoned off so that a series of three-dimensional static and animatronic displays can be installed as a sort of a walk through display type event. All 12 of the zodiac signs are represented beside signage detailing each animal's fortune for the year in addition to the lucky numbers and lucky colors for each animal (the dragon holding the wand a couple of pictures up is one of the 12). There are some other displays that represent Singapore's commercial history along with an amusement park which looks like a county fair type thing and some food stands that look like they belong in the same sort of venue, although the food is absolutely nothing like a U.S. county fair. 

At the center of the whole thing, there is a giant, 18-meter long dragon suspended between the Gardens' man-made super trees, along with a giant sculpture of the God of Fortune. They are both suspended or standing next to a performance stage, although I believe the performance stage may have been removed after the opening ceremony. My memory is not super-clear on that one.

The displays are fine. The fortunes next to each of the 12 zodiac signs, which are essentially horoscopes for the year, are fun and if you are into that kind of stuff. And, by the way, I know it makes no sense with my personality but I am totally into that sort of stuff. I love zodiac symbols and horoscopes and all the rest that comes with it. I suppose it helps that I see a lot of monkey and a lot of cancer in me, although I suppose the characteristics descriptions for both western and eastern zodiacs are sufficiently vague that everyone is supposed to recognize themselves to some extent.

Here's the thing that made River Hongbao worthwhile for us: at certain times on certain days, there are special celebrations that are impressive, and they are centered around that dragon (I assume it's a different animal in non-dragon years). We made it to River Hongbao for the opening ceremony and if you are in Singapore at this time of year, I highly recommend going. It's going to take you a bit of time to get there; there are going to be a ton of people there; and it's going to take you longer to get home than it took you to get there, but the fireworks display (which takes all of a couple of minutes) is definitely worth seeing in person. There's some kind of performance schedule at the stage. I'd skip those and just keep your eyes on where the fireworks are going to happen.

This really kicked off our Lunar New Year celebration with a bang (pun intended). It was held on New Year's Eve eve and got us warmed up for staying up until midnight the next day.

Lion Dances / Dragon Dances

Lunar New Year has its roots in Chinese legend. According to lore, there was a beast in one particular Chinese village which every year on the start of the lunar year destroyed all the crops and animals belonging to the villagers. The villagers called this beast Nian, which means "year" in Chinese.

Eventually, the villagers discovered Nian was afraid of loud noises, bright lights and the color red. I mean...why these things...but just accept it... So every Lunar New Year's eve, the villagers would perform a dance with loud drums and cymbals using a replica of Nian's likeness, with one person manipulating the head of the beast and the other taking the hind quarters, to scare the actual monster away.

The dance has evolved today into the lion dance, which features two people (or more if there are more than one lion) in costumes basically resembling the lions in the picture above. I know, they don't look quite like the lions we find in Africa today but go with me here and trust me: for the purposes of Lunar New Year celebrations in Singapore and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, these are lions.  Sometimes, the lion dance is accompanied by a dragon dance but not always. I'm not sure but I believe the dragon dance is a supplement to and not separate from the lion dance. Or maybe I believe that because that's what we experienced.

Lion dancers, their costumes partly shed, exiting the party zone at Lunar New Year celebration.

We tried very hard to get to a spot where a lion dance was being performed in our time in Singapore. There are schedules on websites of various sorts with times and dates where these dances are performed. Most seemed to be in shopping malls remote from the city center where we were staying and with everything else on our schedule, we just passed on all that and hoped we'd find one. Hoping is not generally a good plan.

We struggled with this. We'd seen a lion dance up close and personal in Hawaii in 2016 when we were unwittingly there around Lunar New year. We didn't see any lion dance up close and personal in 2024. We just couldn't find one. To make our situation worse, we ended up seeing multiple flatbed trucks with lion dance troupes packed into the back with all their gear when we were walking, bussing or grabbing (Singapore's version of Uber or Lyft) around the city. 

We did manage to be in attendance at two lion dances in Singapore but we didn't get great looks at either one. The first was at the opening ceremony of the River Hongbao discussed above during the fireworks celebration. We honestly were so far from the lion dancers and were so focused on the fireworks that we didn't even notice it was going on until we saw the dancers dismantling their costumes. 

The second one was at the midnight celebration of Lunar New Year in Chinatown. We knew full well this one was going on but the space was so tight and our spot was so off to the side that we didn't get a great look at the dance itself. We saw all the gear being loaded in and out and the dancers (both lion and dragon) waiting to dance really clearly but the actual dance...not so much. 

I'm still counting this last one as checking our lion dance box. Hey, you can't always get the perfect view of everything. We tried to be comprehensive with Lunar New Year. We missed perfection on one or two things. 

Yu Sheng

One of the most important traditions of Lunar New Year is families coming together or reuniting and celebrating. It is typical for households to go out to eat as an extended family and indulge in a pricey, multi-course traditional meal called a reunion dinner.

Now, this was not exactly us on this trip. We weren't reunion-ing together with any other family members in person and we are together pretty much all the time and that's just the way we like it. But look, we are not sitting out any tradition that involves food really so we were totally in.

This tradition is common in many Southeast Asian countries right before Lunar New Year and it doesn't have to necessarily be the actual eve of the new year for you to do this. Most restaurants we checked out seemed to be offering seatings of reunion dinners both before and after the actual New Year's Eve in addition to being on the actual day of the midnight celebration. Menus for this meal vary, but there appeared to a soup of some sort, some noodles, some abalone (apparently canned abalone is a Lunar New Year thing...) and some seafood. But every reunion dinner meal in Singapore starts with the same thing, and it's uniquely Singaporean; you will not find this dish in any other country. It's called Yu Sheng.

Chinatown (Singapore) on Lunar New Year eve.

Yu sheng is basically a big sort of salad topped with raw salmon (although other toppings are available). It comes as a series of small piles of ingredients like glass noodles, grated carrot, grated daikon (sometimes colored) and seasoned nuts. What all we got on our plate I couldn't say because I didn't write it all down and I can't pick it all out from my pictures (something about the food coloring). 

Then the salmon is placed on top, followed by (in sequence) lime, Chinese five spice, cinnamon, sesame oil, plum sauce and crushed wontons. This adding of ingredients is all done at one time by the whole dining room. Before each of those last ingredients is added, there is a speech from the host about good wishes for the year and the whole room yells "lo hei!" which means good fortune.

Then you each get a pair of giant chopsticks and start tossing the salad in the air while yelling "lo hei!" over and over again until the salad is fully mixed or you are lo hei-ed out. After that, it's dinner time. The Yu Sheng is actually really good. I was concerned that the cinnamon was going to overwhelm the whole dish but it didn't. 

I believe we were the only non-Chinese family in the place where we ate our reunion dinner so I appreciate the restaurant staff walking us through the whole meal and its tradition but especially the Yu Sheng. They made us feel like we were part of the celebration, rather than outsiders crashing the party. Participating in as much of Lunar New Year in Singapore as we could was very important to us and we were grateful for the staff going overboard to clue us in on what was going on.

I should note that we found it quite difficult to find a restaurant that would accept a reservation for just two people for our reunion dinner. Most menus are set up to accommodate groups of at least four and really ranging up to 12 or more at a table. I guess the amount of money we were going to spend for a prix fixe meal for just the two of us doesn't usually make sense for a restaurant at this time of the year. The first place we made a reservation actually emailed and told us that their reservation system mistakenly accepted a reservation for two and that they had cancelled our table and then their system auto-sent an email asking why we cancelled and suggested we try their Greek restaurant instead.

Ultimately, we asked our hotel for advice hoping they would squeeze us into their theoretically sold out restaurant on New Year's Eve which is exactly what happened (having status helps...). Ironically, we were sat at a table that could hold at least five. I appreciate the Andaz Singapore doing this for us. It was a nice gesture and definitely solved a problem for us.

Fireworks

We did quite a bit of research about where to watch the fireworks on the eve of Lunar New Year. Our final decision came down to two spots: (1) somewhere in front of Marina Bay Sands, the massive hotel on the water at the end of the Singapore River; or (2) Chinatown. We figured Marina Bay Sands would put on a hell of a show akin to a western New Year's Eve fireworks celebration and that the scene in Chinatown would be more packed and way less deluxe. We picked Chinatown anyway.

I have no idea what the celebration at Marina Bay Sands was like. We didn't go and we didn't look it up after the fact. We stuck with our gut on this one and went all in on Chinatown.

Now, I didn't expect this night to be like Times Square in New York City on New Year's Eve in the United States or anything. I didn't expect Ryan Seacrest or Anderson Cooper or Andy Cohen (Andy is the BEST on NYE) or Maroon 5 or Rod Stewart or Green Day or any sorts of internationally (or is it just western world?) famous celebrities in the mix. 

I was right. There WAS a stage show and there was nobody famous that I recognized. Me not recognizing someone doesn't make them not famous, by the way. It was all in Chinese (Singapore usually has everything spelled out or broadcast in four languages; not on LNY Eve) and seemed to feature heavy emphasis on the organizing committee of the local Singapore government, although I might have been misunderstanding this (it was in Chinese after all). 

The stage show featured singers, a lot of talking by the two or four of five emcees running the whole event and there was a lion and dragon dance that winded its way through the crowd pretty close to (or maybe a bit after) midnight.

The Lunar New Year eve stage show (on the right). The dragon dancers are in waiting.

And yes, there were fireworks. But maybe those need some clarification for what I assume is mostly a western audience among the dozen or so people who might actually read this thing.

When people in the United States think about fireworks, we think about explosions in the sky. We think about multiple colors and patterns and effects. We think about a grand finale which seems to go on forever and builds and builds and builds to a massive climax and leaves us fully satisfied. We think about 20 minutes or more minimum. Whether it's New Year's Eve somewhere or July 4 throughout the nation or a display to close a concert at the Hollywood Bowl or a sporting event, these shows are extravagant and magnificent and awe-inspiring.

That is NOT what happens at Lunar New Year's Eve in Chinatown in Singapore. Maybe fireworks is even the wrong work. Maybe it's firecrackers. Honestly, the celebration that night in Chinatown looked like someone lit something on fire in an empty parking lot. It was loud, it was smoky and it was bright white. It lasted all of a couple of minutes, although legitimately, I didn't time it. If that's what it is, I'm good with that. I wanted authenticity here. That's why we ultimately picked Chinatown over Marina Bay Sands. We were in Singapore. I wanted a Singapore celebration, not a New York Times Square one.

I don't know how long it takes to get out of Time Square on New Year's Eve (or I guess the early hours of New Year's Day) but we got home (meaning to the hotel) at 41 minutes after midnight. Singapore public transport is efficient.

Red Envelopes

Like any good holiday (and I'm being causal and callous with those words a bit, I know), Lunar New Year involves the giving of gifts. Hey...who doesn't like gifts or presents on holidays?

On Lunar New Year, there is a tradition of giving money in red (remember the color that scared away Nian?) envelopes. Just to be clear, people like me, who are gainfully employed and theoretically taking care of families, do not receive red envelopes with money inside. The giving of red envelopes is specifically focused on children and maybe parents and grandparents and people who serve you all year (I guess like dry cleaners and mail carriers and others that we sometimes give end of year tips to in the United States). If you want to do it right, give denominations of money ending in 8 (which is lucky) and avoid 4 (which sounds like the word "death" in Chinese).

We didn't expect to have anything to do with this tradition in Singapore (although admittedly I did buy some off Amazon and give my wife an iTunes gift certificate in a red envelope festooned with an impressive-looking dragon). But it seems restaurants like to hand these things out so you are prepared to give, I guess. We were handed a stack of red envelopes (although admittedly one was orange; not sure what's up with that) after each of three of the meals we ate in Singapore. I love these things. They are like little works of art and they are so carefully conceived and put together. They are displayed in the picture above. Personally, the deep red Tiger envelopes are my favorite but that may be the beer connection speaking there.

Our mini collection of red envelopes (also known as hongbao by the way) was a nice addition to our experience. I usually tip our cleaners in a plain white envelope when they come to clean our townhouse once a month. For the last two months, they have received the money in one of these envelopes. They might continue to do this for the near future.

All of these things together added up to the best thing about our vacation in Asia (and particularly Singapore). Red envelopes. Fireworks. Lion Dances. River Hongbao. Reunion dinners. All of it was important. All of it reinforced the other experiences into something that was so rewarding. We felt like we were part of something that had been going on for centuries, probably because that's exactly what was going on. And in case you think I was poo-pooing the whole fireworks thing, I wouldn't have it any other way. That celebration the way it was done was part of how the whole thing goes down and I didn't want or need anything different.

The title of this post is an Anglicization of the Chinese greeting used on Lunar New Year. Gong Xi Fa Chi (pronounced gong she faa chai, although I know I need some sort of accent on the faa to make it a short sound) literally means "I hope you get rich". The actual nuanced translation may be "I hope you enlarge your wealth" or something like that but essentially it's a wish for prosperity and particularly monetary prosperity during the coming year. 

I'm cool with all that. Hey, I hope 2024 brings me a ton of money personally. I mean who doesn't wish for more money? I know there's more to life than that and I'm totally thankful for the things in life that make me realize that every day (particularly the one person I go everywhere with). This whole experience was supposed to be the second best thing we would do on the other side of the world. It wasn't. It was number one. I'm so glad we did this. Maybe do it again next year of the monkey?