Sunday, 17 February 2008

Chinese New Year Celebration 2008- Open House

Main Organizer : Penang State Government, Penang Chinese Clan Council
Date: 16/2/2008
Time: 4.00pm-11.30pm
Venue: Georgetown- The heritage predict of Penang, Acheh Street, Armenian Street, Cannon Street, Soo hong Lane, Ah Quee Street, Kampong Kolam, Jalan Masjid Kapitan Keling

the event location

Khoo kongsi

So the main theme of this event is to celebrate Chinese New Year, but besides that, this event also highlighted 12 Chinese Traditional Festival, namely-
Lunar New Year 农历新年,
Chap Goh Meh 元宵节,
Qing Ming 清明节,
Duanwu/Dragon boat Festival 端午节,
Qixi( chinese Valentine) 七夕,
Teong Guan ( Hungry Ghost Festival) 中元节,
Mid-autumn 中秋节,
Confucius's birthday ( I don't know about this one) 孔诞,
Double Ninth festival重阳节,
Winter Solstice Festival 冬至,
Weiya Festival ( Year-end banquet)( Don't know about this too) 尾牙节,
Zhaowang Festival( Sending the Kitchen Deity off ceremony) 灶王节.
Actually, I copied all the above details from the booklet. you don't expect me to remember all the Chinese Traditional Festival from the event rite? I didn't even know there were so many traditional festival there,well only after I read the booklet back home.


Instead of going as a normal participant, I went there as a volunteering worker for HUI YIN SEH(慧音社), following my cousin brother. Besides the 2 main organizers for this event, there where 12 other co-organizer, mainly associations in Penang. As there were 12 Chinese traditional festival, each co-organizer was in charge of one festival. HUI YIN SEH was in charged of Duanwu/Dragon boat festival!!!

We sold all kinds of Steam rice dumplings. Nyonya, Hakka, Teochew, Hokkien, and even Malay rice dumpling, which was actually ketupat..... All the sales gained from selling the steam rice dumpling was then contributed to the Penang Chinese Private Schools.

The main attraction of our festival was the land dragon boat competition!!! What is that you may ask? It is basically rowing the dragon boat on land, the fastest win!!! It was a very interesting competition that attracted lots of crowds.It may seems simple to many, but you will change your views once you tried it. The key to winning this competition is simple, teamwork. Each teams were given 3 times to compete, and only the fastest time achieved will be used to determine the winning team.
There were 11 teams taking part in this competition, some of which are profesional dragon boat racing teams, and some are just secondary school students.The first round, HUi YIN SHE male team was leading with a time of 17 sec, but during the last round, one team broke their record with a time of 16 sec. Soon another team came in with 13 sec, it was Penang Forward, the champion.After the land dragon boat competition ended, it was open to public who wanted to have an experience of rowing a dragon boat, of course only after you donated Rm2. This attracted lots of small kids.
Cousin brother(R), and me

My duty was to stand by the fence of the land dragon boat and prevent crowd from stepping/jumping/running/crawling in, simple? Once in a while, I will help to push the dragon boat back to the starting point, get water for the MCs , but basically it was quite a relaxing job, I got time to just walk around and enjoy the celebration as well as the food. I even got the chance to meet Dr. Koh Tsu Koon, the chief minister for twice and shook hand with him!!

While the land dragon boat competition was going on, tonnes of activities were taking place in other parts of the streets.lion dance

dragon dance

lanterns

24 seasons drum performance

After the land dragon boat competition ended, it was open to public who wanted to have an experience of rowing a dragon boat, of course only after you donated Rm2. This attracted lots of small kids.The dragon boat rowing turned out to be a dragon boat ride for small kids, two human engines were installed immediately at the back of the boat, and one of the engines was me!!! Pushed the boat till the end and pulled it back to the starting point, then push..... pull.... X 6 times.

After helped to clear up somethings, we went back earlier, at 11pm.
Next up, blood donation campaign.

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