Welcoming the Rooster in Singapore Chinatown

Click on the photos to see enlarged versions

These are photos taken by my dad during his recent trip to Chinatown to experience and capture on camera some of the festive colours and tastes of the Chinese New Year in Singapore. He sent me a total of more than a hundred photos but that's too much to blog, so I selected a few of my favourites that seem to tell a story of their own, or are fairly representative of what New Year at home's like (I'm thinking specifically of the "bak kwa" shop and the queue that's forming...). The presence of "Wuerstelstand" at a Chinese festival fair tells well of what a multicultural society we are, and importantly, how Chinese New Year has very much become to us Singaporeans--regardless of race--a holiday like the others that is eagerly looked forward to and sumptiously enjoyed. See also the wax duck that's one of my grandma and mum's favourite foods, as well as the grumpy-looking seller of tangerines? Well, it is hot and humid in Singapore almost all throughout the year, and I'd guess that his was not the only tangerines stall around that day. And yes, that's my mum standing on the bridge linking shopping centres and overlooking the main thoroughfare in Chinatown, which is the road that you see in a few of the photos--by night and by day.