This week in PostMag: Lunar New Year and the meaning of home
As the Fire Horse approaches, this issue looks at the emotional pull of tradition – from mahjong tables to ancestral villages
It’s comforting – in an admittedly dystopian way – how well my algorithm gets me. Over the past few weeks, I’ve gone down a rabbit hole of horoscope content (both Eastern and Western) on Instagram. Wondering what the Year of the Fire Horse might hold for an Aquarius rabbit? My second-hand knowledge, absorbed from online pseudo gurus with questionable levels of expertise, can tell you (it’s looking bright, if you can believe them).
I learned that the Fire Horse has something of a reputation. In Japan, it’s a birth year known for producing particularly unruly women, considered too free-spirited and too unpredictable. So much so that in 1966, the last Year of the Fire Horse, birth rates plummeted. All of that’s to say, feelings run strong about this year, so brace yourself – or better yet, take notes.
Elsewhere, associate editor Gavin Yeung follows the heat trail of the Philippines’ first Michelin Guide, which has sparked a homecoming of another kind. Chefs, once trained to perfect French sauces, are now flavouring dishes with fish paste and cooking in traditional clay pots. Filipinos had to fall in love with their own cuisine all over again, said the late chef Margarita Forés – and after reading the piece, it’s something I’m very much looking forward to doing myself.
In Taishan, Christopher St Cavish visits the ancestral villages that once exported generations of Cantonese migrants to the world, including Hong Kong, before émigrés returned in the 1920s and 30s. It’s a fascinating blend of East meets West with Greek columns, Islamic arches and wedding cake facades rising out of the Guangdong countryside. In kitchens, cast-iron pans sit alongside woks. And a particular Taishan speciality? Waffles filled with cured sausage and salted egg yolk.
Keeping with the Fire Horse theme, Charukesi Ramadurai travels to Sumba and finds tradition galloping on. Quite literally. Her report from the Indonesian island reveals community, spirituality and a strong reluctance to be remade in Bali’s image. They are growing tourism slowly and deliberately, with hotels such as Nihi and Cap Karoso investing in education, healthcare and clean water access for locals. It’s a place still rooted in tradition – complete with a silent month called Wulla Poddu and the Pasola festival’s horseback battles – but one that’s finding ways to let the outside world in without losing itself.