KOLKATA during Durga Puja. Or New Orleans during Mardi Gras. Or, perhaps more appropriately, Times Square, New York, at the moment the crystal ball drops on the dot of midnight, December 31. If you defined a street party by just these images, you haven't been to Hong Kong during the Chinese new year festivities. It’s a compulsive thing: Either you’re with it, or you’re not in Hong Kong. And if you are, be prepared to spend the waning hours of the lunar Year of the Goat with thousands of people, inching your way into one of the two major flower markets that crop up in city parks. It’s a time when old beliefs get fresh play, and so wads of Hong Kong dollars exchange hands for kumquat plants (symbolic of prosperity), peach blossoms (promissory of true love) and tangerine trees (to ensure long and fruitful marriages). Superstition, in fact, is the guiding force of the fortnight-long celebrations. On New Year’s Day (January 22 this year), the Wong Tai Sin temple is an early-morning must-stop. After a late night, getting out of bed is an effort, but the prospect of getting my fortune told is strong temptation. A bus ride later, we discover a quaint example of traditional Chinese architecture in a terribly modern neighbourhood of intimidating highrises. The pillars are red, the friezes blue, the latticework is yellow, the roof golden and the ambience not unlike Mumbai’s Siddhivinayak temple, but I’m totally taken by the sight of disciplined worshippers on their knees, saying their prayers and then planting joss sticks into pots. The aroma grows thick in the morning air, voices cry out ‘‘Kung Hei Fat Choy’’ (happiness is too pedestrian, these are wishes for a prosperous new year). And I kneel before a wizened soothsayer, wondering if the parrot that plucked out a card for me 10 years ago on a Kolkata street was about to be proved wrong. But the numbered sticks in my penstand-like dabba are stubborn and when one finally falls out, the prediction is too general to upstage the parrot. If you can tear yourself away from the tantalising affair of glimpsing the future, it’s compulsory to dig into the Poon Tsoi. Comprising layers of individually cooked ingredients—red and white meats, pig skin, sharkfin, sea cucumber, abalone, mushroom, bean curd, radish—it is served in a big bowl and it’s quite the done thing to poke your chopsticks deep down to pick out the choicest morsels. Officially, the new year holidays last three days, but to prolong the pickings, celebrations continue for a fortnight, culminating with the Spring Lantern Festival, a sort of Valentine’s Day. Colourful lanterns spring up in every home, restaurant and park and matchmaking games with the lanterns decide on future partners. For all the preoccupation with the future, though, the New Year is very much rooted in the here-and-now business of making money. Fitting, because the festival’s other theme is prosperity. Wonder why no one’s thought of packaging Ganpati yet.
