Chap Goh Meh - the 15th day of CNY

Today is the 15th day of the Chinese New Year. Traditionally, the celebrations will end and folks will return to work in earnest on the 16th day. These days, most of us return to work by the third or fourth day of CNY.

Although most Singaporeans don't celebrate the 15th day of CNY in a big way, still there will be a portion of the Chinese community here who will hold prayers, gather the family for dinner and eat Tang Yuans as a desert. Tang Yuans are soft, chewy round balls made from glutinous rice with a sweet filling of usually ground peanuts, black sesame, yam, green bean paste or red bean paste. It's usually served in a sweet syrupy soup, sometimes it's sweet ginger soup or peanut soup and sometimes the sweet syrup is further enhanced with pandan leaves.

Chap Goh Meh quite literally means "15th night" and thoughout the world, the 15th night of CNY is more commonly known as Yuan Xiao (元宵). However, the Teochews, at least in Singapore, refer to the celebrations as Chap Goh Meh and if you're Hokkien it's Chap Goh Mi (according to my mum who speaks both Hokkien and Teochew fluently). Since my father is Teochew and my paternal side of the family hails from the Chaozhou city of Swatow and my mother is Hokkien and my maternal side of my family hail from the Fujian city of Amoy and given the closesness in the two Chinese dialects, I like to call Yuan Xiao Jie, Chap Goh Meh.

When I was a child, we used to visit my grandparents very often and one of the things I remember is that my paternal grandmother used to make her own Tang Yuans which we Teochews in Singapore would call "Ah Balling". And I loved them. And speaking of round balls, the other thing my grandmother would make is fishballs and I used to sit there for about half an hour completely spellbound by her squeezing through her fist the almost perfectly round little balls of fishmeat and flour into a pail of water.

But these days, since my grandmother's no longer around to make them and my parents can no longer eat too much sugar, we don't eat Ah Ballings anymore except at the restaurant or on occasion at Smith Street. Even though we've never really celebrated Chap Goh Meh anyway; since my family's been Christian since my paternal great grandfather's time, still, every other year or so, on the 15th day of Chinese New Year, I would think of the Tang Yuans and fishballs my grandmother used to make and then make some attempt to make do with frozen Tang Yuans from the supermarket. A poor substitute perhaps but the certainly the best that I can do. =)

Anyway, since CNY is drawing to a close, I thought it would be appropriate to put up the rest of the photos shot during CNY this year. These are from a trip to busy Chinatown to soak up the atmosphere and to see if there was anything we needed to pick up in preparation for the celebrations. Hope you enjoy them.








Photos taken from the Phone Cameras - click on pix for contact sheets.

Chinatown with the k750i


Chong Pang with the k700i


enjoy