tung tung without chiang chiang

TRUTH be told, this must be the most boring-est Chinese New Year!

There were hardly any gearing up in the media with regards to the Lunar celebrations, hardly any crackers were heard after the reunion dinner and one wonders where are all the 'lions' and 'dragons' are hiding?

Even the lower income residents of Pekeliling Flats were able to witness the burning of the red firecrackers coupled with 'Lions' dancing about along the narrow corridors.

Any typical Malaysian child would have grown up experiencing the thrill of lighting up a cracker. Yet, it looks like the next generation of Malaysian Chinese kids will not be able to indulge into such an activity.

Malaysian Chinese kid? Yes as it looks like the Malay kids are able to burn about crackers without fear during the Raya celebrations. However, just before the Chinese New Year, instead of having a month long recipe segment or religious/ customs programmes, the media feeds the public with the Customs department managing to obtain smuggled crackers and the Royal Malaysian Police coming up with threats of fines to parties involved in lighting up the crackers.

Well I do understand their point of view, but why the double standards? And like it or not, the thundering sound of crackers creates a festive like atmosphere- something which was absent this time around.

What about the public killings of animals- done in the name of religion. If such was practised elsewhere, they will have a new tag line- Animal Killers.

It's already the fifth day of the Year of the Boar, yet I've not heard any firecrackers and only saw one lion dance from the balcony of my house, 14 floors above ground level.

Chinese New Year has certainly lost its spark this year. Or perhaps, I'm getting old. Sigh

-The Man Who Sold The World-