Chinese New Year (CNY) has been and is still widely celebrated among the Chinese descendants all over the world. It has been a tradition which involves families reuniting together on the eve of CNY over a sumptuous meal and celebrating the new year over 15 days. During this time, the smaller towns in rural outskirts come to live as people travel back to their respective families' homes. The celebration includes visiting with relatives and friends, bringing gifts and greetings of blessings while the children eagerly waits on for the "ang pow" (literally translated as red packet) filled with cash distributed by the married couples. Feasting and laughter fills the homes and the skies are lit up with fireworks and loud noises and smoke surrounds the air as the firecrackers burst with loud bangs throughout the night and day. Lion and dragon dance performances will be held along the streets where businesses open up their shops for these dance rituals to be performed to rid of any evil spirits and to bring in prosperity for the new year.
However, over the last ten years, this scene is slowly but surely changing as many families have moved away from the small towns to the bigger cities and some others are taking the opportunity to go abroad during this festive season to spend a quiet moment with their immediate family or spouse. This noticeable trend in my personal opinion is jeopardizing the atmosphere and tradition of togetherness and relationship. Chinese and even the Asian culture has been admired by the Western counterparts for their community-based and family-oriented way of living. But in this day and age, where technology and internet plays a big part in the lives of many, we find the newer generation of Chinese and Asians in particular turning more anti-social as these city slickers depend on their gadgets of communication i.e. the iPhone, iPad, Android-based phones and tablets, netbooks, et cetera to convey and access information. The social skills of meeting and carrying out conversations are slowly deteriorating to just a face in the screen.
As much as I cherish technology and the internet, I do feel it would be a shame that we are eventually losing this part of the culture in our society over to the media gods. Just being in a family gathering recently, I cannot help but notice a group of young people seated at the living room, with their eyes glued to their PSP and iPhones... gone are the days where we would snack over the CNY tidbits and laugh over a conversation or make plans to do things together over the festive season.
There maybe many experiences and encounters of Chinese New Year, which may be tiring and sometimes having to meet relatives who seems to be overzealously concern over your life, which I don't really look forward to, but generally, the memories of the past brings a smile to my face just thinking how much we have enjoyed our childhood CNY days and just hoping that our next generation could experience as close an experience as we have had fostering relationship with family and friends but in their own unique ways and enjoy them.
