Kota Kinabalu: In an extraordinary effort to adhere to an age old Chinese Lunar New Year custom, all 560 Sacred Heart Primary School pupils received a hongpao (Mandarin) each in a new year ‘do’ at the school Tuesday, packed with acrobatic lion shows, drum-manship, fire crackers and kungfu demos.
Lined up on stage to give out the bright red package hongpao were Head Mistress Ms Wong Ling Ching, Chairman of Board of Governors, Daniel Tan Swee Peng, Secretary Robert Chiang, President of the Ex-Students Association of La Salle and Sacred Heart, Datuk Ram Singh, Datin Lo Mui Lan, alumni exco members Rashid Awang Damit, Ariffin Mohd Khan, Dr Andrew Sim of Onaki Sdn Bhd and Sacred Heart PTA President.
On reaason for distributing hongpao enmasse, Head Mistress Ms Wong explained: “Hongpao for children is a long traditional Chinese New Year custom, we want the children to feel that tradition, ” she said.
“This is the second year running we have done this” she added.
The amount of money wrapped inside the beautiful red envelope is usually small, hence the real significance lies in the color as red represents fire – a symbol of wishing joy, happiness , success and prosperity .
The red color is linked to various myths and legends, a popular one is the story of Nian (Year) reportedly coming out every New Year Eve and attack crops, live stocks, even children but villagers of old discovered it had a weakness – afraid of color red and noise and used it to ward off monster Nian .
Small wonder the Sacred Heart New Year ‘do’ was a vibrant morning of a deafening chain of fire crackers, spectacular lion dance to pounding of drums, clashing cymbals, provided by two organisations – San Shang Gung and The Gaya Surf from IPG Gaya.
