Fool's gold, sellers' tea

The Lunar New Year is always full of colour, gaiety and shopping for that new dress, bag or other brightly colour clothes, as well as sweet goodies. Retailers often fall over themselves to meet this seasonal demand, and where better to come to sell or buy them than Chinatown? I remember that my parents used to make their annual 'pilgrimage' to Chinatown this time of the year to pick up some things for the Lunar New Year. Oriental Emporium was still around then. We lived in the far north of the island in the British Naval Base in the 1960s and 70s (and Chinatown is in the deep south). There weren't any subway train at all then. The bus journey easily took at hour one way, if not more, and these buses weren't air-conditioned either. I rarely, if ever travelled with them 'down town' for these shopping trips, not even after we moved to middle-of-the-island Ang Mo Kio, which cut the travelling time and provided greater comfort through air-con buses and trains.

The price of gold has gone up recently, but there's plenty here, silver even. All fake of course, but symbolically essential nevertheless. Money begets more money, and that's what the Chinese look forward to in the New Year. So if you decorate your homes with these money, or 'eat' them, then you will indeed have a good beginning to the New Year (if you believe in these omens, that is). These 'money' are typically chocolate shaped in the form of ancient China's money and today's coins wrapped in faux gold and silver foil. Actually, the people who make the real money are the people who sell these 'money'!