Every first day of the Lunar Year the Chinese and
other races will come together and celebrate Chinese New Year, where family and
friends get together for open house and enjoying each other’s company. On this
day, children will wish their elders happy Chinese new year and each will get
an ‘ang pao’ as a reward. This can also be said as a day where everyone pays
their respect to their parents and grandparents. There is no difference in Le
Meridien Kota Kinabalu for this celebration. We decide to visit the Sri Pritchard Home, a home for elderly. In conjunction to that, there were lots of
preparations to be made.
I was very much involved in this celebration as, I am
now not a new intern here, my colleagues and I bonded quite well after a month.
I was responsible for the gifts that we would be giving the residence there.
This year we all agree on giving a hamper to every residence. I never thought
that wrapping hampers would take up so much energy and time. From ordering the
items inside to arranging the items and wrap and decorate it. Everything takes
time.
On that day, everyone wore casually as we load the
entire hamper into the hotel’s catering lorry and off we go to visit Sri Pritchard Homes. When we’re there, all the residences there are so welcoming. We
then move all the hampers and the special Yee Sang into the hall. Most of the
residences are gathered there as they wait for our arrival. All of them look so
happy and excited to meet us.
First we started with a speech, and then continue with
the Yee Sang (Toasting Ceremony). After that, the general manager of Le
Meridien Kota Kinabalu went around to give out the ang pao and hamper. While
the GM is doing so, the rest of us mingle around and talk to the residence
there. It was fun and there were many stories from all of them, some were sad
but some were very touching.
After taking picture we all went back to the hotel. It
was truly a wonderful experience. Besides having to go on that trip, we also gave
out gifts to the media outlets as to thank and wish them in this special
occasion.
Below is a featured article on our visit and also one of the outlets
that we send our gift to.
Group Photo in Sri Pritchard
Featured Article in New Sabah Times on the visit to Sri Pritchard
Sending gifts to media outlets.
2 comments:
Hi there, (: I love cny, its probably my favorite festive holiday. Not to mention the ang-baos we get and the pineapple tarts and a whole heap of other food, makes it so much more worthwhile. Culture is something alot of youngsters these days 'conveniently' choose to forget. It is important well at least to me, to always remember your heritage and what encompasses the meanings behind your own nationality.
To have visited a place with old folks and seniors can be said to be visiting a house unified by similar background stories but yet each elderly holds some sort of cultural knowledge people our generation would never even come close to guessing. It saddens me to know that my own grandmother who is 90 this year had to bound her feet when she was young, her tiny feet now size 2.5 still bears the marks of her ancestors' culture. I wonder what are some of the interesting stories you've heard from some of the old folks there and do share it with us when you have the time to. (:
cheers,
jolyn law
You've brought the festive holiday back again! :)
I did the exact same thing last Chinese new year, there were about 15 of us visiting the old folk's home. We brought pastries and goodies along, and put on the most sincere smiles on their faces when the red packets appeared :D
I think they deserve to be pampered once in a while ;)
xX Jasmine
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