Card Games during Chinese New Year

[By Tia Boon Sim] Thanks Virginia for spreading the joy of Chinese New Year in the last post on this site. For me, Chinese New Year (CNY) or Lunar New Year this year starts with a reunion dinner on the eve of CNY. This is when family members return home from cities all over the world and get together for dinner. After dinner, family members will chat, play cards and mahjong. In the old days, firecrackers and fireworks would mark the official beginning of CNY at 12am sharp. However nowadays, firecrackers and fireworks are banned in many countries because of fire hazards.

On the first and second days of Chinese New Year, we visited relatives and friends especially the elders. The married adults will give children the red packets or ‘ang bao’. Inside the red packets, they will be money to symbolize wealth and abundance for the children. Friendly gambling sessions are common during CNY and this sketch depicts one of these sessions among my relatives after some good foods and drinks including free flow of wines, beers and sake. After my last attempt on coffee ink which appeared as brown stains here, I used red wine for the patterns on the walls. Hope you like it as much as I do.

Last CNY, I did a sketch on lion dance.