I am a bit late in sharing the pictures of Chinatown's street light up this year as it has been a darn busy month with work, baking and a short overseas trip! Nonetheless, late is better than never!
Guess many of you would know which zodiac animal is the upcoming "king" for the new lunar year; it's none other than the rat! Known for its intelligence and craftiness, the rat signifies the start of the new 12-year cycle and there's actually a story of how it managed to win the race.
After the two furors involving the centerpiece for the pig's year and the mooncake festival in 2019, the designers (students from the Singapore University of Technology and Design) did a pretty good job with the rats; smiley, radiant and bursting with happiness!
There's a blue ribbon sticking out from the back of the gigantic gold ingot (which acted as a base for the rats) and it led to a grass patch right behind where 11 different zodiac animals were lined up.
They were lined up in the order of appearance over the 12-year lunar cycle! Remember i spoke of the rat winning the race? You can read the rest of the story here.
In total, there were 1,388 lanterns of which 200 were in the rat-form. You would see the bulk of them at the back, towards Outram Park MRT station, in the middle section separating the busy New Bridge Road and Eu Tong Sen Street.
It's dangerous to just cross the road in order to take a close-up picture with the smaller rats! Please wait until the road closure on Lunar New Year's eve (Friday, 24 January 2020) to have your fill of selfies with the rats; likely with plenty of photo-bombs.
The remaining 1,188 lanterns were in the form of flowers, gold coins and auspicious greetings hung over the roads. Ethnic Chinese loves money and it's evident when the popular well-wishes for lunar new year revolve mainly around wealth and prosperity.
Decorations along the parallel South Bridge Road didn't raise any eyebrows with mainly flower-shaped lanterns. Having covered the festive decorations for quite a few years now, i must say the best so far for South Bridge Road was during the snake year!
Of course it's a must to take some photos at this vantage point overlooking the centrepiece! It's no longer a secret but that's hardly surprising when even i had blogged about its location before. You may read further over here.
Only one thing i lacked was a tripod to shoot better photographs!
For a conservative society like Singapore where we believe in monogamy, marriage between man and woman etc, is there anything amiss that you notice from the centrepiece?
I can spot the dad and the little kids. For the two characters next to the dad, am i right to assume they were of the fairer sex and likely wives? Hm... that's polygamy right and from my understanding, that's illegal in Singapore! Oh well, they could jolly well be helpers too....
Whatever the case, that's for the netizens to debate. My friends and i were not concerned over it and preferred to spend our time taking useless pictures like the above which were hard without sunlight / a tripod.
There shall be another post on the street bazaar and i sure hope it would be published by this Sunday since lunar new year is only about a week's away! Time flies and it's amazing that even i am meeting a new milestone in age this year.
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Period for the Street Light-Up
Until 22 February 2020
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