Oranges in water, love in air: Many colours of Lunar New Year celebrations

Tey Suet Lai scribbles a friendly message on a mandarin orange and tosses the tangerine into a stream by a limestone cave temple.

It’s an age-old tradition in countries like Malaysia and Singapore, where the fifteenth night of the Lunar New Year marks the end of the festivities and the dawn of the first full moon.

It’s an evening of family, food and fireworks. And, of course, love.

In a surreal scene illuminated by moonlight and the soft glow of red lanterns, many Malaysian singles like Tey take a leap of faith and toss mandarin oranges into bodies of flowing water in hopes of courting a romantic partner.

Tey visited the Kwan Yin Tong cave temple in her hometown of Ipoh in Malaysia to take part in the cherished tradition.

“We wrote our names, [social media] handles and phone numbers on the oranges. We also left messages like, ‘Hi, feel free to follow me on Instagram. I hope we can get to know each other,’” Tey tells TRT World.

In the past, single women engaged in the ritual, hoping that destiny would bring them a life partner.

Eligible bachelors were meant to pluck a floating orange with a woman’s name written on it to find their matching love interest.

Nowadays, as Tey shares, contact details are written for added measure and a modern twist.

“I remember tossing my orange and soon after, I received a call from an [unknown] caller — I didn't dare to pick up, so [that's the end] of that story,” the 26-year-old reminisces.

In Malaysia and Singapore, the festival is commonly known as Chap Goh Mei in the Chinese Hokkien dialect, which translates to the fifteenth night of the new year.

In other areas of the world, such as China, the final day of the new year is better known as the Lantern Festival (Shang Yuan Festival), says Spring Xu, a Chinese national who has been living in Malaysia for about a decade. It is also called ‘yuan xiao jie’, meaning the first night of the full moon.

This year, the time-honoured occasion falls on February 24.

Besides being a night for bonding with loved ones, it is also one of courtship, which is why the festival, wherever it is celebrated, is often referred to as the Chinese equivalent of Valentine’s Day.

While the Lantern Festival can be traced back to as early as the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) in China, Shirley Chan, a professor of Chinese Studies at Sydney’s Macquarie University, notes that it is hard to pinpoint when exactly the celebration became associated with romance.

She suggests its origins may have come about roughly 400 years later during the Tang dynasty (618-906 CE) based on ancient poetry from the time.

“In traditional feudal society, the Lantern Festival provided an opportunity for unmarried men and women to get acquainted … as unmarried women [then] were not allowed to go out freely,” Chan explains.

Carrying and admiring “lanterns was an opportunity for friendship, and unmarried men and women could also use lantern-viewing [as a way] to find partners for themselves,” she adds.

In traditional Chinese culture, the full moon, under which the festival is celebrated, also symbolises a joyous union. “Some well-known Tang and Song poems describe how young people could meet and find their lovers on that day.”

The tradition of tossing mandarin oranges into rivers, lakes, or seas, however, is a custom that, Chan says, started on Malaysian shores and is unique to the Chinese Hokkien community in the Muslim-majority country, who migrated from Fujian, China long ago.

Believed to date back to 19th century Penang, an island city located off the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia, throwing mandarin oranges into water is said to bring good luck and help young women find their “destined person soon”.

“Oranges are an auspicious fruit for [Chinese people], and the homophone for it is ‘good luck’,” Chan explains. “There is a Fujian folk song which says that throwing tangerines can help you find a good husband,” the professor added.

For context, Malaysia is a country with distinct ethnic diversity, featuring a vibrant mix of Malay, Chinese, Indian, and indigenous populations. Last year, the fifteenth day of the Lunar New Year celebrations coincided with Thaipusam, a Hindu festival observed during the full moon in the Tamil month of Thai, adding to the already lively festive period.

Ethnic Chinese, which includes Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, Hainanese, and other subgroups, make up over 20 percent of the population and are the second-largest demographic in the country.

Regarded as more cultural than religious, the tradition of tossing tangerines is predominantly practised by the Hokkien community, one of the largest Chinese subgroups in Malaysia.

“This tradition originated from Hokkien Chinese culture, which explains why some [Malaysian Chinese] do not follow it,” Tey says, adding that “As a Hokkien myself, I have been aware of this tradition since my childhood.”

Still, the tradition has largely been homogenised, meaning Hokkien or not, everyone is welcome to join (or not).

Alex Lim, 38, usually spends the festival helping his mom in prepping for prayers for the day. While he is of Hokkien descent and from Penang, he has never participated in mandarin orange tossing events. “That may be why I’m still single,” he jokes.

Meanwhile, Emica Thong, a native of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital city, says the tradition has evolved. “Perhaps in the past, it was common for young women to throw the tangerines and men to pick them up, but these days, people of all genders tend to participate in throwing,” Thong says. “Everyone just enjoys the festival.”

Though she cast a mandarin orange once as a teenager, Thong says she's not sure if she would do it again because she’s worried about how it might affect the environment, especially if there aren’t enough volunteers who can clean up leftover oranges.

For the most part, the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia observes similar Lunar New Year customs as those in China, albeit to varying degrees, according to Thong.

These variations can range from subtle differences in the timing and nature of particular activities, to more significant distinctions in the symbolism and meaning attributed to various aspects of the holiday, including across different Chinese subgroups.

During Chap Goh Mei or the Lantern Festival, people enjoy lion and dragon dances, and eat tangyuan, a type of glutinous rice ball delicacy that signifies togetherness and harmony in the family. Solving riddles and guessing poems is on the itinerary too, though not as common in Malaysia.

“I feel proud that we have our own unique traditions like tossing tangerines, but it would be fun to play a game of guessing Chinese poems as well because I find it interesting and challenging,” Thong, who is pursuing a master's in Chinese studies at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, remarks. “I have a particular fondness for Chinese poems.”