Notes from the dorm
As boarders in Oxford, thousands of miles away from home, how do we celebrate the Lunar New Year? For one thing, we don't receive red packets. The highlight of the holiday season was definitely the festive dinner held at my boarding house.
Most of the Chinese students at my school don't often eat Chinese food, partly because Chinese restaurants in Britain are relatively expensive and the dishes are often adapted for British tastes. So the Lunar New Year dinner, cooked by some of my housemates, was a welcome change, allowing us to savour authentic Chinese fare at a lower cost.
Our common room was decorated with strings of red origami cranes, drawings of dragons and pandas, and many fai chun [traditional good-luck posters]. I couldn't help chuckling at one which read: 'I love Hong Kong, Hong Kong loves me'. Whoever wrote it expressed the sentiment of other Hong Kong boarders here. Our feelings of homesickness are especially strong during the Lunar New Year, which we have been so used to celebrating with family and friends.
The dishes filled the room with a delicious aroma and our housemistress had to shout to stop people swarming near the food before it reached the table.
'The food we have tonight is even better than the Chinese takeaway round the corner!' my Polish roommate said as she helped herself to another serving of fried rice.
Everyone helped out that evening - I ended up scrubbing a rice cooker which was thoroughly stained with red bean paste. The lovely dessert I had just eaten wasn't such bliss after all. And it suddenly dawned on me - at least you don't have to clean up after your meal when you fork out massive sums at restaurants.
