Sim Bak Heng
From NST Online

The Spring Festival has arrived, bringing with it bright and beautiful blooms to add colour and scent to the Chinese New Year. Sim Bak Heng noses around for this season’s best buys

CHINESE New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, is a celebration of the first season of the year after a long and chilly winter. Spring is associated with renewal as it is the time when flowers start to blossom, signifying the beginning of life. It is for this simple reason that flowers are commonly used as decorative items for Lunar New Year to brighten up a home.

Although it is hot all year round in the tropics, the Chinese community in Malaysia still buy flowers, be it potted plants or cut flowers, to add festive colour and spirit to their homes to welcome the new year. Non-flowering plants like bamboos will be creatively dressed up.

Traditionally, the flowers used to usher in the Chinese New Year are chrysanthemum, rhododendron and kalanchoe, mainly because of their large, colourful and profuse blooms. For those who prefer fruits over flowers, the fruit most commonly used is the local limau kasturi. Usually, the plants are specially grown just in time for harvest for the Chinese New Year. As these plants bear many fruits, it therefore symbolises a year of abundance, although most of the fruits will drop in barely a month. Bamboo has been widely used for many years. Although there are not many varieties, the business-savvy are smart enough to literally put a different twist to the bamboo. The bamboos are twisted into patterns while in their growing stage.

They are then given names although they might all belong to the same species. It is these creative businessmen who came up with the "fortune bamboo", "prosperity" and "luck-twisting" bamboo, which are favourites among all Malaysians. Tang Toh Leen, 65, who operates Perusahaan Pasu dan Okid Leen, the oldest nursery in Segamat near the Segamat Hospital, always comes up with flowers and plants to cater for the celebration.

"This year, there are three new popular species for the Spring Festival. One of them is a type of ginger flower which is dark red in colour. "Another one is a plant with flowers that resemble the shape of birds. The third one is the maple plant," she said. Tang is assisted by her daughter Chan Mei King, 18, and daughter-in-law Annie Pang, 32.

Chan said most Chinese started making their purchase in early January, adding that the market is expected to peak one week before Chinese New Year. "Our customers are not just the Chinese. There are others who like flower plants and bamboos," she added. Chan said her job is to help her mother to dress up the bamboo and put them in vases so as to enhance the value of the products. She said she bought decorative items such as miniature lanterns and birds to dress up the bamboos.

"It takes about 30 minutes to dress up a vase of bamboo. Most customers like to buy ready-decorated bamboo although some prefer to dress it up on their own," she said, adding that the bamboo is the only festive plant that needs lots of decoration. Annie said the plants are both procured locally and imported. "Plants with bright and bountiful flowers are more popular among the Chinese as it reflects the spirit of springtime," she said.