Once a year during the Chinese New Year, the Chinese community of Melbourne congregate on one particular night in the Chinese dominant suburb of Box Hill. There are more Chins here than a Hong Kong phone book. Literally.
I went to visit this festival for the first time ('to get in touch with my roots' as one friend who was also there put it) in my time here in Melbourne. It was... a uniquely... unneccessary experience. Seriously, there were stalls here that had absolutely nothing to do with Chinese New Year (ie. the Liberal party stall, the Commonwealth Bank and Westbank stalls - [are you saying all Chinese people love to save money? Oh wait a minute... you're absolutely right!] - and the carnival. What does a carnival have to do with Chinese New Year?
I mean I'm not sure that there are people in China who celebrate New Year by riding on funrides ('housexy' was the name of the ride. There were five year olds riding on 'housexy'. I kid you not.) or winning stuffed toys by playing impossible to win rigged games.
Having said that however, there were some half decent food stalls there. We managed to get good old yok kon (beef jerky) which is always a Chinese New Year favourite, and there were stalls selling sugar cane drinks (the ones where fresh sugar cane is pushed through this mangling machine which always makes you want to put your hand in it) and coconut juice as well.
And there was a pirated DVD stall! It was like a Malaysian pasar malam all over again! It was this quadrangle - Chinese movies to one side, TVB series to another, anime on one more side, and - wait for it - porn on one side. There were salespeople manning each side, so I'm not sure why they chose the girl instead of the seedy guy to man the porn side. What totally confused me, however, was when a girl brazenly dragged her obviously uneasy boyfriend to dig through the stacks of lewd DVDs on offer. Let's just say it left me feeling conflicted.
All in all, it was a really interesting experience - it was literally a Yellow River of Chinese people jostling each other in this one unifiedblob, not unlike my Hong Kong experience - I really had no idea how people actually stopped to buy any food from the stalls!
Happy Year of the Ox to all of you, especially to my little sister who will be 24 this year! Oink! I mean Moo! I mean, what noise does an Ox make again?
2 comments:
haha you saw the porn too!! at first we were like, hey how come they can blatantly sell NON original dvds.. then we realised it was also blatantly porn!?
did you spot the token ang mohs.. where there would be a whole congregation of asian friends explaining things to him/her, lol.
and i've never heard bakua called beef jerky before.. i mean, i knew that's what it was, but it just sounded weird.
which ride was housesexy?! was it the main one that goes round in a loop sort of thing..
ohwell, it's the first time i was there too.. man i felt so banana.
happy chinese new yr! (:
Haha K! Yeah... it was a funny experience, the whole thing... kinda like pasar malam, I think! No, I didn't spot the token ang mohs, although I did bump into/miss a lot of friends there that night, some of whom I've not seen in ages!
Yeah, yok kon/bak kua doesn't taste as good when you call it beef jerky!
housexy was that huge one, you were right... I saw this twenty something looking like he was really enjoying himself in that ride... I wish I could be as carefree!
Yeah, full on bananas, B1! Happy Year of the Ox!
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