Seeing Red (Chinese New Year 2011 Special)

You can tell it's that time of the year again.
(Yes, yes, I'd said that I'll stop blogging for now but...)

The sofa cushions are red.

The flowers... are red.

 Well, almost...

The bed sheets are red.

The weird-looking lanterns, which look totally out-of-place against your modern fluorescent lamps, are red.

The cloth-like thing hanging over your front door for no particular reason, is red.

And of course, you'll be forced asked to wear red too, or you won't get any of those red-coloured packets, which, quite happily, contain money in them.

Name me one other time of the year where nearly the entire country is covered with a massive blanket of red-ness. No, Valentine's Day doesn't count, that's PINK(And I don't mean the singer).

So, here we are, at 2011's Chinese New Year! Year of the Rabbit, as it is. (lights fireworks-again. Yes, I have a habit to do that on festive occasions.)

Besides the obvious nausea-inducing red-ness and the craze of buying rabbits-thus leading to mistreatment by inexperienced owners, blah blah blah- there is nothing to dislike about the lunar new year.

I mean, come on. Money in packets, readily given out by relatives? Fireworks at the ready, to be fired into infinity(and beyond) at your whim? The best food you can get, and a whole group of relatives you've never even heard of?

When else?

Now that you've got that securely hammered into your head, I want to talk about a small issue of stereotyping of race and religion here in Malaysia. Because the weird thing is, during the weeks running up to CNY, whenever I raised a topic about it, my school mates will go, "Er, but you're Christian aren't you? Thought you didn't celebrate?"

Of course, the response given every time will be a "and why not?". But really, I find this absurd.

Yes, I'm a Catholic, but I am also a Chinese Malaysian. Why wouldn't I celebrate?

The answer, I suspect, lies in the Moral/Sivik textbooks from our early primary years. I did a little research -rummaging through theStar online archives- and found that I was right.

If you can remember, those textbooks thought us this: Malays are Muslims, Chinese are Buddhists and Indians are Hindus. Which is RIDICULOUS.

As far as I know, only the Malays are not allowed to convert to other religions(a topic that I will avoid debating here for obvious reasons). According to the Malaysian Constitution, other races can follow any faith as they wish. Question answered, and the Education Ministry should quickly correct those mistakes.

Funnily enough, my other Christian friends who don't speak English much seldom have this problem.
Why? Because apparently, Christians are supposed to speak English. And those who don't are assumed to be non-Christians. Yet another stereotype. Why are people who speak Mandarin assumed to be Buddhist/Taoist and English, Christians??? Idiots, but I can't blame them.

I could just end this post with my notorious gloomy 'Happy Chinese New Year', light some fireworks, and perhaps burn down the house, but I won't.

I'll just burn down the house.

Note: Oh yeah, you might have noticed that I have stop using the "Terence Wang on...(blahblahblah). Yes, I've dropped it permanently. It felt silly.

Although having said that he won't, Terence Wang still feels inclined to wish all readers a Happy Chinese New Year. And if you're married, he would particularly appreciate it if you give him a red packet or two. Yes, the ones with money in them.