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| A cool stylization of the year of the dog; poster in old hotel advertising their CNY meals |
KL goes all crazy in decorating for a wide variety of holidays - apparently including for Christmas, though Christianity is an extreme minority religion here. Guess the commercialization spirit of it lives on here nonetheless, along with the decorating potential.
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| CNY decoration |
This year is the year of the dog. Apparently there's been a lot of controversy around this in Malaysia, since because dogs are seen as unclean animals in Islam, most public locations (think: malls) haven't been using images of dogs to decorate, in order to not offend the Muslim ruling majority. Understandably, the Chinese minority is not happy about this.
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| CNY-style decoratin at the Intermark mall - note they're using fishes instead of dogs... |
I was excited to try out a CNY dinner here, and had invited a bunch of coworkers, as most of the places I'd seen only serve these in multi-person units. Sadly, everyone had to work extra late that day (not unlike most other days...), so I didn't get to try this out. But from what I hear from others who have experienced a traditional CNY meal, there's a shared dish with a variety of
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| My service apartment hotel left this for last week - 2 mandarin oranges, 2 fortune cookies, 2 red envelopes w/ gold choco coins |
chopped and grated veggies and other things on it, and then you pour a variety of sauces on it named with a variety of prosperity-related names. Then this gets tossed, and you chow down. Apparently much emphasis is made specifically on prosperity (a coworker was explaining that there's a Chinese god of wealth, though not ones for happiness or health). And apparently mandarin oranges are given out as a symbol of prosperity, as the word for them is similar to the word for wealth.
Not too much more to report on this, actually. There were no specific spectacles or parades, though some malls and even my hotel had lion dances scheduled. There are, however, tremendous decorations all over, with red lanterns festooning many streets, and the malls going all out.
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| From above |
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| CNY style decorations in a mall (forget now which one! they're kind of everywhere) |
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| The Pavilion goes all out with decorations |
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| Display outside a department store |
From Kathy: That's interesting about dog decor. Fish are standard for CNY because the sound for fish is like that for abundance, though the characters are different. The Happy Buddha, a Chinese adaptation of the Buddha of the Future, has happiness covered. The dish you described is not familiar to me for CNY, though fish is standard because of the abundance wish. In Taiwan at CNY the stores & restaurants were closed, at least when we were there. Fortunately our landlords invited us for dinner. Happy year of the 🐶!
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