Bring on the Red!

It’s my absolute favourite time of the year now. CNY! And the days leading up to it

I remember in years of past, my mum would bake cookies to sell…. And bake she did!

The whole house was transformed into a cookie churning factory. We’d roll, cut, baste, bake, pack and seal THOUSANDS of pineapple tarts, peanut cookies and peanut puffs. The hall will be laden with tables and table or “work stations” and everyone had a job. Dad would be in charge of scraping the pineapples and cooking the jam, my siblings and I would be in charge or rolling and filling and cutting and basting… and Mummy, chief operating officer! Year in, year out. We’d make the cookies till the very last day we could. I still remember the oven sweating away, baking the final batches of tarts while Mum whipped up her delicious culinary CNY delights on the stove above. We were cleaning floors, washing baking pans, and changing the curtains and cushion covers all during the mad rush that was CNY eve.

After dinner, we’d all get into gear. Everyone again had a task. We had the clock to watch you see…. After midnite, all brooms, mops, brushes and other cleaning paraphernalia would be retired. “No cleaning on the first day”. Strangely, of the many many superstitious rules we sometimes questioned (like “don’t open an umbrella in the house, you’ll never grow tall”) this one, we adhered to religiously!


Dishes would be dealt with quickly and immediately the floor washing team would kick in. Hoses of water soap suds and slippery moonwalks across the kitchen to the back yard later, we’d rush to get things ready for prayers at midnight. (Now I know why my mom had 4 kids). 2 of us would be assigned to cleaning the fruits, setting up the table and candles and josssticks, the other 2 will be assigned to finishing up the cleaning of the house.

All eyes will be on the clock… and as midnite approaches, trust me, calmness and serenity in welcoming the new lunar year? NOT IN THIS HOUSE!

“QUICK! Pass me the mop!!!!”
“Watch out! I just mopped that part of the floor!”
“Have you swept under the cupboards?””Where’s the brush I used 5 minutes ago?””YOU STAINED MY FLOOR!!! STOP WALKING ABOUT!!!!!”
“Where’s one more cushion cover!!?!?! I lost a cushion cover!!!!”

30 seconds to midnite, mops, brooms brushes and such are haphazardly FLUNG into a cupboard marked “DO NOT OPEN”, we make a dash to change out of our sweaty work clothes to a brand new RED something, and make another dash out to the front porch.

There, coolly, my father will be waiting, jossticks in hand to hand us our 3 sticks to pray, in our pretty new clothes, for prosperity, health and 4D.

The standing joke all those years was that if we couldn’t clean the house in time, we’d lock the house up on the 1st day of CNY and pretend no one’s home. But we ALWAYS managed, it was ALWAYS a rush… but oh my!!! What a LOVELY rush it was!!!!!

Sure I griped, groaned and complained… but looking at it now, 2 weeks from CNY in 2009, where my parents are retired, we don’t bake any cookies anymore, not even for ourselves (my cooking experiments which my Mum still calls “a waste of flour” don’t count) where I know, it’ll be a quiet affair waiting for midnite, where the only sounds will be that of the tv, I can honestly say, HOW I MISS THE GOOD OLE DAYS!