xin nien kwai le! (happy new year!)

Reading: xin nien kwai le! (happy new year!)

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02.15.2010

xin nien kwai le! (happy new year!)

This week there were signs all over town that the biggest celebration of the year was about to take place. Kuala Lumpur takes the arrival of the new Lunar New Year very seriously, and everywhere I went it seemed like people were getting things together for the upcoming festivities. The hubby and I have been extremely excited to participate in some serious Chinese New Year’s gorging.

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But, culture first. I stopped by a Buddhist temple during a walking tour of Chinatown, and it was filled with people making offerings for the New Year.

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In a crowded, narrow hallway, a templegoer edged towards me to deliver his offering flowers to the right place.

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By the first day of Chinese New Year, I was hankering for some yee sang, a traditional Malaysian Chinese salad of sliced raw salmon, cilantro, radish, carrot, pickled daikon, cucumber, sambal, ginger and vermicelli noodles. Groups of diners toss the yee sang together with their chopsticks to greet the New Year.

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Unfortunately, most restaurants seem to be closed for the holiday, and, for the first time since we’ve been here, Kuala Lumpur is a ghost town. We ended up at a decent Thai restaurant, and the lack of photos I have from that meal should be indicative of my level of disappointment at missing a big Chinese banquet.

Still, I managed to catch a decent photo of this monk, no?