Chap Goh Meh: Chinese Valentine’s Day

Today marks the final day of the Chinese New Year celebrations, which is known as “元宵节” (pronounce as “Yuan Xiao” in mandarin) or Chap Goh Meh which means “the 15th night of Chinese New Year” in Hokkien dialect. It’s also known as Lantern Festival as in the ancient China, all the houses and streets were brightly decorated with lights and red lanterns during the Chap Goh Meh evening. The red lanterns often have riddles on them for people to guess and solve.

Chap Goh Meh is also dubbed as the Chinese Valentine’s Day. In the ancient times, the Chinese single and young ladies were not allowed to go out at night except for Chap Goh Meh. The single ladies would dress to the nines for the day, stroll the streets accompanied by a chaperon, and toss mandarin oranges into the sea or river as a gesture of hope to find a good husband. Meanwhile young men who look for a wife would row a boat and try to pick up the mandarin oranges that thrown by the ladies they admire.

Over the centuries, the celebrations of Chap Goh Meh have seen a lot of changes in today’s modern society, but the tradition of tossing mandarin oranges is still kept alive with the festival. Nowadays we can find many “mandarin oranges tossing” events in Malaysia organizing by local organisations or associations on the night of Chap Goh Meh which open to young unmarried men and women. The single women can toss the mandarin oranges inscribed with their names and contact numbers into the sea, river, or lake, in the hope that the young men who pick up the mandarin orange would call and get to know them.

Nowadays, this tossing tradition has also evolved to a celebration activity that is not only for the young unmarried men and women, people of all ages can also participate and toss symbolic items other than mandarin oranges, such as apples, stones and bananas. These items symbolize different meanings in Hokkien dialect – Apple (Ping Kor) for Good Wife (Ho Bor), Stone (Chio Tau) for Bungalow (Ang Mo Lau) and Banana (Keng Chio) for “Winning Lottery” (Tio Beh Pio).

For those who wish to take part in the tossing activity, you can visit the following spots to join the crowd for the fun of tossing as a way to wrap up the celebration of Chinese New Year in 2016.

1. Esplanade, Penang

Organizing by the Penang State Tourism, the celebration will be featuring delicious Penang street food as well as games, performances, Baba Nyonya cultural show and riddles that comes with small gifts. Then, there will be grand fireworks display towards end of the night.

2. Taman Jaya Lake, Petaling Jaya 

3. Tanjung Harapan, North Port, Port Klang

Image: mpklang.gov.my

Image: flickr.com

Image: flickr.com

Cover image: wenming.cn