Up Close and Personal
During my childhood in the 1950s and '60s, Lunar New Year was the most important festival. My father ran a grocery shop on Queen's Road East in Wan Chai, and the new year was the only time when the store was closed for three days.
During my childhood in the 1950s and '60s, Lunar New Year was the most important festival. My father ran a grocery shop on Queen's Road East in Wan Chai, and the new year was the only time when the store was closed for three days.
The hard-earned break was preceded by overtime work on New Year's Eve. The store closed after the sumptuous dinner, but all the staff stayed on to do stocktaking, an annual exercise only possible on that evening. It would go on until about 2am or 3am. Grandma and my mother would cook an extra supper for the staff. Father would give up on sleep and go to Victoria Park for early morning bargains for peach blossoms and other flowers from the flower market.
He began this habit of staying up all night during his childhood when children were required to keep a New Year vigil as their filial duty, to ensure good health in the new year for their parents. My generation did not observe this custom. We got a few hours' sleep after supper. My mother would put a red packet under my pillow.
I would get my hair cut 10 days in advance, before barbers raised their charges during the last week of the lunar year. By contrast, mother took me on a shopping spree during that week when everything was a bargain. I would invariably get a new pair of shoes and a new suit with a shirt and tie. In this new outfit I went through the New Year's Day routine, starting with greetings and presentations of cups of tea on my knees to my elders: grandma, father and mother. This was a profitable ritual. Pouring tea, kneeling and reciting some well-used seasonal wishes, I would receive red packets in return.
Setting off firecrackers was a favourite pastime until they were banned after the 1967 riots
The rest of New Year's Day was usually spent in the closed grocery store, playing mahjong with visitors, relatives and friends dropping in. Over the next two days we would call on those same relatives, exchanging gifts which were recycled from one visit to the next. I suspect we often handed the same box of confectionary we had received from callers back to them. I stood to gain, with red packets filling up the pockets of my new suit.
