It’s a long weekend and it’s also the start of the Singapore Heritage Festival 2016. There are quite a number of activities going around and to tell you the truth, we are a little confused (because too many activities that we do not know which one to go!). In the end, we decided to go for the activities held at Bukit Pasoh in Chinatown.
It was quite an interesting sight when we reached the place. The area was filled with historical buildings and Chinese clans. You feel like you have been brought back to the past as there were people dressed up in traditional costumes walking along the streets. Smarties were totally fascinated with the scene before them.
Programs were all printed nicely on the “wall” for people to check out on the night’s activities.
First stop, we found a smiley lady happily knocking on something. Guess what? It’s the traditional ding ding candy (叮叮糖)! Smarties went to queue for it and gotten some to try.
Next, we found people queuing to have henna painted on their hand.
We started to feel thirsty after the candy and we found a pineapple juice stall serving free glasses of pineapple juice to everyone. You read it right! Is glass not in paper cup. That’s how people serve/sell their drinks in the past.
Just nice, after the drink, the performance began. It was a traditional Indian dance. The crowd were nice enough to let smarties squeezed to the front to have a good view of the performance.
After the show, while the performers were resting, smarties went up to them for a photo taking session 🙂 Mei mei was really attracted to their traditional costumes. She’s requesting for this for racial harmony day….hmm….let’s see if I can get my hand on this….
We went further to explore other stalls and found an uncle carrying out Chinese calligraphy on white fans. His stall was the only stall with super long queue as many were waiting to have their preferred wordings or names written on the fan.
Not surprising, we joined the queue too! Smarties wanted a fan for themselves as well. While in the queue, smarties got to take the chance to have a try on performing the balancing act: carrying goods in the baskets with a pole over the shoulder. That was how in the olden days, people transport their goods to different places.
Right after we gotten our fans, there was a lion dance performance and we headed straight back to the same place where we watched the Indian dance.
I’m amazed that one of the “lion” was actually a lady when they removed their “costume”. It is not an easy task as the lion’s head can be pretty heavy.
Before the night ends, there was a finale! All the performers will once again perform along the stretch of Bukit Pasoh street.
Although the night was rather warm, nonetheless we had a great time exploring, experiencing and soaking in to the cultural traditions happening around us. Smarties had a great night of live learning experiences with sweet treats and Chinese fans as souvenir to bring back home.
Not to worry if you have missed the first weekend of Heritage Festival. There are 2 more weekends to go and we are looking forward to it. For more details on Heritage Festival, do check out their website @ http://heritagefest.sg
Happy holiday!
Interesting! We were at the Keong Saik side, because we just happened to think of going to Kok Sen for dinner. We were lucky to get a table but waited almost an hour for food aiyo.. Lol
Wow!! Waited so long for a table? Everyone must be famished!