The Chinese community in Mumbai celebrated the Chinese New Year at the Kuan Kung Temple, famously known as the Chinese Temple of Mumbai. Apart from the Chinese community, youth from other communities also visited the temple to join the unique celebrations.
The Chinese New Year was celebrated on Wednesday to mark the beginning of the first day of the Year of Snakes according to the Chinese zodiac. While the festival continues for a week to a fortnight in different countries in East Asia, the Chinese community in Mumbai celebrated the festival in a very humble manner at the Kuan Kung Temple in Mumbai’s Mazgaon.
Members of the Chinese community visited the Kuan Kung Temple on Wednesday to seek blessings from the gods and fulfill the vows made on last new year. The community appeases the gods by offering various types of food, significantly non-vegetarian food to the gods who do not particularly prefer vegetarian food. However, the community has been doing away with old traditions and brought fruits, flowers and dry fruits as an offering to the gods.
The community celebrates its new year with ultimate fervour through prayers, food, dragon dance, lantern festival and firecrackers. Members of the community also exchange red envelopes on this day as a symbol of good luck.
Talking to The Free Press Journal, Albert Tham, the caretaker of Mumbai’s Chinese temple, said, “Nowadays people do not bring food according to old customs as they have shifted to far-away places and it becomes difficult to carry for longer distances. They also give some part of this offering to the caretaker and take some with them. Since the community is very small in Mumbai, the celebration is also very small like a one-day get-together.”
Apart from the Chinese community, people from other communities also visited the temple on Wednesday to participate in the New Year celebrations. This consists of mostly youth who have come to know about the temple and the New Year through social media or mutual acquaintances of the community members or the spouses of the members who have married outside the community.
Peter Pau Liu, a member of the community, who has shifted to Pune, makes sure that he visits the temple to participate in the New Year celebrations as there is no presence of the community in Pune. “I feel like I am the only Chinese in Pune therefore I make sure that I celebrate the new year in Mumbai as I have my sister and a few friends from the community here. Although we are very few members left in the city, we celebrate the festival together by meeting each other, exchanging sweets, visiting the temple and enjoying the famous lion dance,” he said.
Mumbai and Kolkata have a very small population of Chinese community who had migrated to India before the 19th century. According to a piece of literature about the census carried out by the East India Company available at the Kuan Kung Temple, Mumbai had a population of 305 Chinese community members in 1872. The population had later increased but a large part of the community migrated back to China following the 1962 Indo-China war.
According to Tham, Mumbai has a population of around 1,000 people from the Chinese community who are scattered across the suburbs in Andheri, Versova, Malad and Ghatkopar. Earlier, the city had its own China Town in Kamathipura due to a large population of the community which slowly died out as the community members sold off their houses and migrated elsewhere.
