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With
great haste, he requested his mother to send a
matchmaker to his dream girl's home to arrange the
marriage. In his rush, the star-crossed optimist did not realise that the girl he had seen was not the daughter
of the house but a visiting niece. And so on his wedding
day, the poor groom found that instead of the radiant
smiling girl he had expected, he was married to her fat
and rather plain cousin.
The story
does have a rather happy ending though, as his wife was
a wealthy woman! Chap Goh Meh goes by a few names. In
Mandarin it is called Yuan Xiao, but in the traditional
Hokkien dialect of Penang, Chap Goh Meh means the 15th
night of Chinese New Year. It is celebrated with prayers
and offerings to mark the end of the Chinese New Year.
During this auspicious occasion, houses are brightly
decorated with lights and lanterns are hung over the
balcony or five-foot ways for the last day of the
Chinese New Year. Prayers to the ancestors are offered.
Despite a ban, firecrackers are lit as a 'send-off' to
the new year. The next day, people go back to work,
businesses operate as usual and everyone is looking
forward to the next Chinese New Year.
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Various
activities are planned to mark this very traditional
occasion but the two mainstays are the Dondang
Sayang and orange/tangerine throwing ceremony. In
the morning, nyonya households will distribute
pengat, a sweet and rich broth of tubers and bananas
to relatives and friends. As evening falls, the
atmosphere relaxes as the gentle strains of Dondang
Sayang fill the air. Dondang Sayang, literally
meaning lullaby of love, is an interplay of sung
poetry, usually revolving around the theme of love,
between a man and a woman, each trying to outwit the
other in the name of affection whilst traditional
music plays in the background.
In the past, Chap Goh Meh was one of the few
occasions where eligible young ladies, transformed
into scorching beauties, were allowed out from the
confines of their homes. |
Eager
gentlemen could only admire longingly at all the passing
beauties, as the lovely ladies were always accompanied
by an entourage of the fiercest looking aunts and amahs
(servants)! These young maidens (and spinsters) would
throw oranges into the sea as a gesture of hope to wed
good husbands. To keep this quaint tradition alive in
modern times, orange throwing has transmogrified into a
competition of sorts, where oranges thrown into the sea
by girls (single or otherwise) would be scooped up by
boys in boats. The boat with most oranges would be
declared the winner.
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