Chinese New Year's Traditions

While many Chinese people today may not believe in traditions and customs that has been handed down from generation to generation anymore, some still practice them as it provides continuity with the past and provide the family with an identity.

Not a drop of my blood is Chinese but I was all ears when businesswoman Edna Co, a Feng Sui expert from Cebu City previously shared some traditions practiced by the Chinese on new year's eve and I'm going to pass them to you. Here are some of them.

* A week before New Year's Eve, everyone is advised to engage in a spring cleaning, or "cleaning to the max". By this she literally meant cleaning all the nooks and crannies in one's house.

* On New Year's Eve, all brooms, brushes, dusters, dust pans and other cleaning equipment must be wrapped in a red cloth, tied with a red ribbon and hidden away. No one is supposed to use them on New Year's Day to avoid conflicts and exchange of hurting words, and to refrain from sweeping away good fortune.

* Buy red things with Chinese characters because they bring good things like Chewroh-Pin'an and K'ng Huat for peace. Hang these in your house and you'll get whatever you wish for.

* Display ponkan and oranges in homes and in stores. Tangerines are symbolic of good luck, and oranges are symbolic of wealth.

* Prepare wealth baskets. Get a small basket, lay a red cloth at the bottom of it and put one or two kilos of rice on the cloth. Next, get a red envelope (called Lai-See or Hong-Bao) and put money inside. If you wish to be really wealthy, put money of all denominations inside the envelop and place the envelop under the rice. Next, place the basket beside a mirror so that that bounty will be doubled by the mirror's reflection.

* After the New Year, cook the rice and eat this with all the family members to symbolize peace and unity. In case a family member is absent, an extra place should be set to symbolize the person's presence at the banquet.

* The money inside the envelop should not be spent but be deposited in the bank.

* All debts had to be paid on New Year's Day and nothing should be lent. Anyone who does so will be lending all the year.

* Everyone should refrain from using foul language and bad or unlucky words.

* No one is supposed to wash their hair on New Year's day because it would wash away good luck for the New Year.

* Do not use knives or scissors on New Year's Day as this may cut off fortune.

* Another tradition is the giving of the Red Packet (Lai-See or Hong-Bao) with money inside to unmarried couples. This is to wish them good luck in finding their future partners.

* Prepare something good for the kitchen god. By tradition, the kitchen god or Zaowang leaves the house on the night after the New Year to report to heaven on the behavior of the famiy throughout the year. To obtain a favorable report from the kitchen god, the family must give him a ritualistic farewell dinner with sweet foods and honey. Popular in the Philippines is the "tikoy", a sweet concoction made from sticky rice. Some said this is to bribe the kitchen god and seal his lips from saying unpleasant things about the family.
Kung Hei Fat Choi!

A night with a magician

IT was one rainy night way back in college when my closest buddy James excitedly told me that my childhood dream was about to come true because a real circus showing an honest-to-goodness 'black magic' had just set up their tents in town.

Knowing that I was willing to starve the whole week just to pay the for the exorbitant entrance fees from my allowance, James blackmailed me saying he'll only accompany me if I pay half of his entrance fee, which I reluctantly agreed to because I wouldn't think of going with any other person.

I was so impatient to watch the circus such that James chided me for not giving the circus people enough time to set up their tents, and I shouldn't complain if they wouldn't be able to give a good performance.

It shouldn't surprise you that we were the first customers in the circus. The tent was dark inside and I kept a tight grip on James' arm.

A 'white magician' who entertained the audience for the first part of the show had us almost rolling on the floor in laughter but as soon as the 'black magician' entered, the atmosphere changed.

I felt my ribs tighten and my hair stood on end as the lady magician bowed and made gestures in silence, so hushed I could hear the wind fizz the hair on my cheeks.

Clad in a black silk outfit with a red, flowing train, she seemed to be testing the atmosphere for imaginary presence of other invisible beings, and suddenly, everything seemed to take on an air of unreality.

A chill crept through my whole being and the nightmare has not even began. The crowd was deathly silent. The series of unbelievable and surreal shows followed at a dizzying speed until the highlight for the night came.

A sexy lady clad in a blue two-piece bikini stepped onto the stage. A hush fell as the magician announced that she was going to cut off the lady's head. In an ominous voice, the magician warned other magicians and those endowed with 'magic powers' not to interfere with her performance at the expense of death.

The bikini-clad lady was led to a corner of the stage where she was to meet her end. My eyes were transfixed on the uncanny picture. The lady winked at the audience before putting her head between two pieces of wood resembling a guilotine. There was a flash of blade, and her head rolled to the floor.

James was just in time to clamp a hand at my mouth to stop a blood-curdling yell from me, reducing it to a horrified gasp as the magician picked up the severed head and put it on a platter and trotted around the stage like a warrior displaying his captive.

Shuddering with distaste at the macabre sight, I felt bile rise up to my throat. I swear the girl's steady eyed-look was directed straight at me. She even winked, or was it just a figment of my horrified and numbed imagination? I couldn't tell anymore.

James however was laughing through it all and was obviously having a very good time. He jabbed me in the ribs when I diverted my head from the nightmarish sight.

The next thing I knew, it was all over and the lady in two-piece bikini was back in one piece.

We joined the mad stampede of people rushing on their way out of the tent. I shuddered as I remembered the grotesque head on the platter, and once outside the tent, I gulped in huge breaths of air, glad that the ordeal was over.

Tightly gripping James' arm with both my hands, I pulled him towards a popcorn stall, talking non-stop about what we have just witnessed.

Surprisingly, James remained quiet. Further, he resisted when I pulled him, which struck me as odd.

Suddenly I noticed something was really odd. An unpleasant smell was coming from James, which was not there before. I pulled one of my hands from his arm and saw grime and dirt.

Confused, I let go of his arm and turned to look at him and froze in horror as a dirty face minus four front teeth was insanely laughing at me. I discovered that I was gripping the arms of Bonjing, a mentally-deranged man known to the whole town as one who was harmless when sober but dangerous when hungry.

Alarmed, I looked around and saw James laughing so hard a few meters away, holding his tummy as though his intestines were about to spill out.
To add insult to injury, not only James was laughing his guts out but a whole lot of people who saw me practically hanging on to the arms of Bonjing.

I really strangled James for that, squashing a couple of his pimples in the process although it was not his fault.
(It's been a year and three months since James died but his memory lives. I still think it is so unfair for him to die so young).

A burned tongue is no fun!

Do you know the feeling of sipping really hot coffee or chocolate that it burns your tongue so bad? Opps make it thrice that bad.

We were attending this regular weekly forum in Tagum City last week. A special table was set for lunch allocated for the speakers and the VIPs while the rest of us ordinary humans would line up and get food from a buffet table.
When I looked back, the special table was deserted because the guests decided to skip lunch. (We learned later that it was the birthday of a politician and our most of our guests trooped there).

I pointed to the empty table and eight of us proceeded to the table, patting our shoulders for being spared the agony of falling in line just to get food. As usual, I skipped breakfast and was quite hungry so without wasting time, I picked up my spoon and dipped it in a small bowl of chicken soup. I concluded that it must have been cooked that morning because it looked very cold already.

I took a sip of the soup and became the first victim.
I was taken aback because the soup was so hot although it looked cold and so calm on the surface. Tears welled in my eyes as I bravely put down my spoon and quietly bore the pain by rolling my tongue to sooth it.
If I had a choice, I would have made a frantic dash to the refrigerator to get ice to cool my burned tongue. I was embarrassed to tell anyone so I kept quiet and tried to eat my supposed-to-be delicious lunch, which by then had become tasteless.

The next thing I knew, the person sitting beside me did exactly what I did earlier and I was immobilized because I just knew their was no stopping him. He sipped chicken soup from his spoon and I just watched in helpless facination because I knew what would happen. My seatmate was momentarily stunned, then pretended nothing happened. He decided to keep quiet and so did I.

When Noynoy, a publisher from Tagum picked up his spoon and dipped it in his soup bowl, I raised my arm to warn him but I came too late. He became victim #3. Realizing that I knew what was happening, Noynoy burst out laughing after he guessed how I knew. It turned out that almost all of us in the table experienced a burned tongue because of those innocent-looking bowls of chicken soup.

I carried the tasteless feeling with me and went hungry for several days, never getting satisfaction because everything I ate seemed to feel like cardboard.
On the other hand, my tongue, which is a tough worker (what with all that talking, mixing food, germ fighting, tasting, and swallowing) finally got a rest.

I remember a tale my friend told me when he too, became a victim. He ordered a cup of hot chocolate at a sidewalk cafe early one morning on his way home from an internet cafe. The cup of chocolate looked so cool that he sipped it directly without testing. After a gulp, he spit it out and told me that whether I would believe him or not, the gabi leaf on which he spat upon just withered!

Lesson learned: Never underestimate a cup of coffee or chocolate that sits placidly on a table. It could be hotter than your tongue could bear, and #2, don't wait for experience to teach you this hard lesson.

A date with 'Carlo Rossi'

I was first introduced to 'Carlo Rossi' on a bright Sunday afternoon when I went with a group of media people who were out to get footages of a 'hito' farm in Los Amigos Palaisdaan in Mintal, Tugbok district.

Earlier that morning, I boarded a Crosswind with media friends Gwen, Kuya Ross, Riel, Jimmy and Doc Alcantara of the City Health Office.

We encountered some difficulty in finding the place. After negotiating a barely passable road a few kilometers off the main highway, we passed by a signboard with the words
"Private Road" inscribed in black ink.

That's when our doubts were confirmed: We were lost.
Sure enough, we ended up in somebody's private drive. Blame it on the people who pointed with their lips when we asked for directions earlier. One of the lessons I have learned in the past is never to trust somebody who points with his lips for that would surely mean an indefinite distance.

Finally, we found a man who pointed the direction with his forefinger so we were sure we were heading for a definite direction. Crispy fried hito and huge plates of newly cooked rice awaited us.

After the meal, bottles of wine materialized out of nowhere, (in celebration of Kuya Ross' birthday) and the guys handed Gwen and I one shot each (which was really a glassful) of Carlos Rossi burgundy, assuring us that it won't make us drunk.
"Walang tama yan," Kuya Ross assured us.

I downed my glass and cringed at the acerbic aftertaste, cringed some more when the glass was refilled. Not used to alcohol, I could feel my senses start to reel so I refused the fourth refill.

A few minutes later, Robert, one of our companions remarked that my eyes have grown heavy-lidded and sleepy while Gwen had grown red-faced. Indeed I was sleepy, (groggy too) and to think that I still have to file my news stories at the office!

The trip back to the city was short and uneventful, except that I had a very hard time keeping my eyes open. I grew weak-kneed and my vision doubled.

Back at the office, I stared glassy- eyed at the computer. The monitor seemed over-bright and blinking. Infact, everything in the office seemed to be over-bright and blinking. My eyes swam yet I had to finish writing my news stories, or else I would be the recipient of a memorandum early the next day.

"Walang tama, ha!" I made a mental note to reproach Kuya Ross the next time we met, which I did. He answered with a laugh, "There's always a first time. Masasanay ka rin"

My first real introduction to alcohol (if that's how you would consider Cali Shandy) was when I developed the most knee-shakingly intense crush possible on an engineer fifteen years my senior. I was still a struggling high school sophomore flaunting tons of flabs in my whole body while he was already famous (locally nga lang) with a flourishing career, and a super-gorgeous girlfriend (agay!), which meant that any form of romance was out of the question.
All I could understand was that some great some great curse had descended from the heavens and rendered me, a mere 14-year old mortal, totally helpless.

My "knight with a drafting table" was nice to me and ignored my flabs that I was sure I had fallen in love with him.
For weeks, I lived in a dreamworld but my resultant bliss lasted until the night when sought me out with a message that he has something "very important" to tell me. (You're right if you think I was expecting he's going to tell me that he had dumped his gorgeous girlfriend and that he can't live without me. It later turned out to be one of the five worst nights of my life).

I remember feeling the need to be inspired by a chemical lowering of inhibitions and dragging my closest friend to a nearby cafe to drink a bottle of Cali Shandy each. What a laugh it had been when I ended up vomitting infront of my "engineer-knight" and discovering that all he wanted was to ask me to help with the decorations for his coming wedding!

As my long-gone buddy James once said, "if you're not capable of experiencing hazy, torrid nights without outside assistance, I'm terribly sorry for you".

Anyway, after much effort, my stories came out just fine (judging from the silence of the editors while going over my stories). One thing I can say, Carlos Rossi (or any of his other names) don't mingle well with work.*

A midnight tunnel visit

Scary thoughts were running through my mind as we picked our way deeper into the tunnel. What if the statues would all come alive at the stroke of midnight? Or what if the guard or Edith, our other companion who prefered not to go in would turn off the lights and lock the door of the tunnel?

I BET not too many would dare enter a tunnel at fifteen minutes before midnight. It was eerie and I felt a mixture of fear and apprehension, yet I know it was a chance I wouldn't allow to pass.

I was embarassed to back out because in the first place, it was my idea to explore the Japanese Tunnel located along Diversion road in the middle of the night.

I braced myself and tweaked the nose of one of the two Japanese sentinels standing outside the tunnel entrance just to make sure he was really a statue. He looked so real that I almost imagined he blinked his eyes when I made a double check and pinched his arm before descending the few steps down to the tunnel with fellow reporter Gwen and a lady guide last week.

The interior of the tunnel was damp. The ceiling was high enough to comfortably stand beneath, and wide enough for four people to walk by side by side but I experienced a feeling of claustrophobia.

I've always hated enclosed spaces but there's no going back, I know. A few meters away, the tunnel branched off where two Japanese statues were seated at a low table, as if in deep conversation. The guide told us that was the conference room used by the Japanese.

"It must have been here where they cooked up ideas and strategies for battle," I told Gwen.

Scary thoughts were running through my mind as we picked our way deeper into the tunnel. What if the statues would all come alive at the stroke of midnight? Or what if the guard or Edith, our other companion who prefered not to go in would turn off the lights and lock the door of the tunnel? Gwen even suggested an earthquake and I shivered at the thought of those tunnel walls closing in on us and that would have been the last night of our lives.

Such frightful thoughts made me walk faster, determined to finish the exploration before midnight.

We walked for several meters through the tunnel, pausing now and then as our guide hurriedly pointed out objects and points of interest. I sensed she must have been in a hurry to get out of the tunnel as much as we do.

She was just one of the staff whom the guard happened to call on since the official guide had long ago drifted to dreamland. (How was he to know that a couple of weird female reporters would decide to explore the tunnel at midnight?)

We passed by a big rectangular hole half-filled with water, and protected by iron railings on top. Our guide explained that a buried treasure had been recovered from the area.

The tunnel provided me a glimpse of what life was like for the Japanese during the battle, although that happened years and years before I was born.

I was too busy trying to balance my steps and avoid stepping on the puddles while still managing to ask our guide a few questions. At one point, my wits almost deserted me when I looked up and saw a Japanese woman sitting behind grill bars. She looked so real and alive in the dimness of the electric bulbs that I felt my hair stand on end.

The female statue was at the end of the tunnel. We hurried to go back, grateful that no untoward incident happened, or that not one of the statues decided to scare us by coming back to life.

We were about halfway out when we heard the unmistakable prolonged howling of a dog. I grew up with the belief that when dogs howl, especially during full moon nights, they have seen ghosts.

My hair stood on end as we sprinted through the remaining steps out of the tunnel and open air, only to find out that Edith did the dog howl imitation to scare us. She succeeded in scaring me but I didn't give her the satisfaction of knowing that. The relief that I felt as we emerged from the tunnel was overwhelming.

That actually was not my first time to explore a tunnel. In fact I've gone through far more frightening and challenging caves in Bukidnon during my college days, but it was done in broad daylight.

I've entered caves where we had to crawl on our stomachs to be able to enter, where stalactites and stalagmites were everywhere and a single movement could send bats of all shapes, sizes and colors flying in all directions.

In one cave, we even had to wade in waist-deep water and pass over super-narrow passages (traffic congested due to our fat classmates who couldn't pass though the "slim test" passage), or through a deep cliff whose distance was to far to jump. Sharp stalactites protrude at the bottom, ready to welcome anyone who falls down with their sharp tips.

We were only able to pass through the cliff when two of our bigger classmates made the supreme sacrifice and offered their shoulders as a stepping stones (we remembered to give them alaxan that evening).

I always had one goal when exploring caves: That is to get out of the cave alive in one piece.

In life we also have to chart different caves of trials and tunnels of temptations. They come in all forms and hardships but it is comforting to know that there is always light at the end of the tunnel, and that no matter how complicated the tunnels or caves are, you always have the chance to surmount the obstacles and come out into the light to breath the air of freedom and relief.

A night on the streets

MIDNIGHT. My hands grew cold and clammy as I stood on the dimly lit pavement of San Pedro Street.
I shivered as a gust of cold wind blew up my spine, hugging myself as I felt the cold seep through my tight-fitting jeans and spaghetti-strapped shirt. I knew I should have been in dreamland hours ago but I've gone too far and it's too late to back out. Besides, Jeany (not her real name, of course) wouldn't hear of it.
Strike a pose and smile, there's a prospective customer coming," Jeany said. I grew hot and cold all over at the same time.
Oops...excuse me, I am not that financially desperate to earn money this way. I just pestered Jeany (she's a "Pink-card holder" who lives in the same boarding house I live in) the whole day to allow me to accompany her to get the feel of how it is to be a streetwalker. Now that the moment was at hand, I was shaking and felt like running away.
I watched as Jeany approached the obviously drunk guy and hooked her arm though his. I thought they were going to leave me but to my horror I saw him whisper to Jeany and pointed to me. I was dumbfounded with shock and fear. What will I do now?
Jeany handled the situation in a manner I admired. I overheard the guy asking Jeany how much is my price. Very calmly she replied, "One-five."
One thousand five? For her? Are you kidding?" the guy asked, his eyes popping. He looked at me in disbelief and mumbled to himself, "I must be more drunk than I thought I was," before staggering off.
Jeany and I laughed our heads off as I flagged down the first taxi that passed by. I was still shaking and didn't want to carry on with my adventure. What if the next guy would have no qualms about the price?
That I was not willing to risk finding out.
Jeany is just 19 but she'd been in this business since she was 15 years old. Already, she is a mother of two children with different fathers and is two months pregnant. The children are a sorry sight, obviously lacking nourishment.
But, what can Jeany do? Her live-in partner, who she admits is the father of the child in her womb, does nothing all day but drink. He even finds customers for her and she couldn't even see a shadow of her income. He gets them all. He beats the children and even Jeany mercilessly.
I feel my blood boil whenever he does that, but she would always say that she has nowhere else to go.
Jeany is an orphan who grew up in different homes of relatives. She can't count with her fingers how many times she'd ran away. She didn't finished third grade. She can't read and write but she can hook three to four customers a night. Sad to say, the maximum amount she earns from each customer is P200. She'd be lucky sometimes if her live-in partner is too drunk to beat her if she does not give him her night's earnings.
Jeany is only 19, but she looks too old for her age. She's become a master at the game of stalking and hooking men on the streets. Her life is filled with misery but it's the only life she has known.
Every night, there are thousands of Jeanys who stalk the streets to earn money for survival. She doesn't know the joy of having parents who takes care of all her needs. All she knows is that there is no other way to earn money for food except to lay her wares in the streets at night.
A few months from now, starvation will be her biggest enemy as her stomach will grow and she has to temporarily stop "working" not because she wants to but because she has to. What future awaits her and her children is a question that hangs in the air.
(Raquel C. Bagnol writes for Sun.Star Davao)

Thursday, April 03, 2003 Sun.star Cebu)

Fright night

(Published in Sunstar Davao, October 29, 2006 issue)

Time really flies fast, especially when you’re away from home. I woke up one morning and was surprised to notice cotton cobwebs behind ghosts, skulls and goblins displayed in grocery stores. It meant the approach of Halloween, (and it also meant that I’ve been here in this island for a year and 16 days to be exact) and I decided to use Halloween for my special feature for our anniversary issue.

Last night, I clipped a small advertisement from our previous issue of the newspaper before leaving for the “Wicked Warehouse” somewhere in Malakal, a few miles from my boarding house. I stopped by our office to get the thousand-dollar Canon camera we only use for rare occasions (the fear of breaking it and having it charged against my salary is not a welcome though) and prepared to be frightened out of my guts.

Expecting to see a deserted warehouse and a few daring people, I was surprised to see cramped parking spaces and a long line of people extending all the way to the main road. A yellow line (police lines) served to control the chaos. Alas, I forgot that this is Palau and nothing much happens so a little variation like this would surely draw in crowds from their homes.
Shrugging off the notion of falling in line, I just went around taking photos of the crowd, mostly teenagers, waiting for their chance to enter the warehouse. Only about 10 are allowed at a time. Unexpectedly, one of the ghosts (whom I of course didn’t recognize because of his frightening mask) went out and saw me.
That ghost served as our passport and in no time at all, I and my buddy Robert became one of the screaming victims inside the Wicked Warehouse.
The warehouse was dark and smoky, each room creatively designed to really scare the wits out of people, complete with squeaking doors, coffins, skulls and masked ghosts who expectedly springs at us from dark corners. I know I was too old to be frightened but my concentration in taking photos was lost.

Then we entered a smoky cemetery. “Kamatayan” was standing in a crudely built stage holding his “karit” and waving it towards anyone who enters the door. Gravestones and empty liquor bottles were strewn everywhere. I read the inscriptions on the tombstones and understood that the producers were discouraging the young people to engage in drinking liquor.
In fairness, the producers have created a magical and horrifying world from a crude warehouse, and I guess the youngsters got the message they wished to portray.

Halloween and my article is not finished yet. I’ve got to prepare for the Deadman’s Ball on the eve of October 31st. If I win a prize for the most frightening mask, that would hurt me because I’m planning to attend au naturel.