Keeping Lunar New Year traditions alive

Photographer Simon Go Man-ching has an annual ritual: when Lunar New Year looms, he takes his young daughter Queenie to Yau Ma Tei for a trawl through the confectionary and dried seafood shops.

"Yau Ma Tei is among the few places in Hong Kong still filled with old-style shops. Those dried seafood shops where clerks have to climb up to foodstuff stored in big glass jars are a rarity now. In most stores, it's all sealed into plastic bags that customers just grab before heading to the cashier," he says.

The visits are a way of giving Queenie, now 10, an appreciation of traditions and how previous generations celebrated the Lunar New Year, Go says.

"She just wants to go to Disneyland during Lunar New Year. To her, it's nothing more than a chance to get red packet money. I want her to realise that there are many customs associated with the festival, which is a valuable chance for the extended family to gather and greet each other."

Lunar New Year has lost much of its lively communal spirit as old customs are giving way to modern preferences for mall grazing or holidaying overseas. Still, some families like Go's seize the opportunity to teach youngsters about their cultural heritage.

Among Go's plans is a visit with Queenie to the Lam Tsuen Wishing Tree, where oranges tied with joss paper are still tossed on to its branches to improve the odds for the future. But even that ritual has lost much of its flavour as real fruit has been replaced by plastic and joss paper has evolved into a checklist of standard wishes that people can tick off instead of writing out specific hopes, he says.

His daughter lives in an affluent world, so to keep her grounded, Go is making use of the Lunar New Year to teach her about traditional virtues.