The Salad Toss Set Up
Lo Hei!
Let the party games begin!
Hip Hop Hooray! Its Chingay!
The President of Singapore!
Chinese New Year week 2 has come to an end. I think the holiday is almost over. But this past weekend there were several events that kept this energizer bunny of a holiday going.
First up was the office party last Friday at the Singapore Zoo. At 2:30PM the office staff, decked out in the bright reds and golds of Chinese New Year, boarded buses to go to the zoo for a party. It was my first visit to the zoo but that's not the story here. It was my second office party. Not unlike the first party last December at the beach this one featured an emcee and a DJ who guided us through the ceremony and silliness of the afternoon.
The first event was the Singapore Chinese New Year "Tossing of the Salad". Not unlike the Schmenge Brothers ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmenge_Brothers) Lutonian Christmas tradition of the "Exchanging of the Socks", the Salad toss, called Yu Sheng in Mandarin is supposed to bring good luck. Salad of paper-thin raw fish, finely shredded fresh vegetables, candied melon and citrus, red and white pickled ginger; pomelo flesh, sesame seeds, lime leaf, crispy crackers and peanuts dressed with plum sauce, oil and spices. At tables of 10 people we added the salt, pepper, oil and other accoutrement's, each time chanting something in Mandarin. Once all the fixins are poured on diners toss the salad together with their chopsticks, shouting ‘Lo hei’ (‘toss up’) and making wishes for abundance and prosperity. Apparently the higher you toss the better the fortunes but the kicker is that if some falls off the plate you may have bad luck. I'm in big trouble!
The tables then competed in games like "name where that tune came from". Not one of my strong suits as I can't yet differentiate between Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Singaporean, Indonesian and Malaysian tunes. I do have a good ear for the Bollywood songs though. There was a dance contest, a lip sync contest to Malay, Chinese, English and Hindi MTV videos and many other crowd pleasers. My table came in second and we were awarded a nice bag of Tang for our efforts!
As we headed to and from the party pavilion I did catch a glimpse of some of the zoo animals. White tigers, tapirs, monkeys, giraffes and more. Looks like a really nice zoo. (http://www.zoo.com.sg/)
Saturday night, a few short blocks from home, was the 35th annual Singapore Chingay Parade.(http://www.chingay.org.sg/). The parade, with roots tracing back to Malaysia, is a two night affair and consists of music, costumes, floats, dancing and singing. We got a good idea of the volume of the noise generated by the parade on Friday night as we had cocktails on our front porch. the loud Emcees and the equally loud amplified music for each troupe was clear as a bell two blocks from the action where we live. But Saturday we had grandstand tickets to see it all unfold in front of us.
Its fun to go to a parade at night and in Singapore it only makes sense as it cools down from super hot and sweaty to moderately hot a sweaty. Orchard road was decorated and well lit and our Emcee (I think there were about 5 in different locations along the route) had his mike turned up to eardrum piecing volume. Pre parade included performances by some local hip hop break dancers. Imagine the sight of skinny Asian kids in big baggy gansta clothes spinning on their heads in the street. Next up was a big troupe of belly dancers much more to my liking. The gals did a good job of getting the guys in the crowd riled up and ready for the parade.
The excitement grew as the first float approached. It was going against the direction of the parade - it was the President of Singapore Mr. SR Nathan (http://www.istana.gov.sg/). The crowd cheered as the duly elected Prez rolled by. I would say more about the Singapore government here but I have read about how painful it is to be caned.
After the Prez passed by the real parade began. It was loud, colorful, commercial (floats sponsored by Coke, Bosch and many other companies). the costumes were really spectacular and some of the non hip hop things were really fascinating - lion dances, fire spitters, pole balancers, giants, drummers and there was only one marching band - an all girl outfit from Korea. the floats were the opposite of the Rose Bowl Parade - I think people were banned from using anything natural for construction.
I have lots of pictures as you will see. I think that as of today there are only 3 days of CNY left. I will be sad, but relieved.......
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