Chinese New Year party glitters
Fireworks, good food and dance the order of the day as Chinese New Year 2019 celebrations set Cyrildene alive last month. This year is themed the Year of the Pig.
ON SATURDAY February 16, Chinatown in Cyrildene, Joburg, put on its festive finery and glamorous costumes. The colour red, which symbolises happiness, predominated. Chinatown was celebrating the Chinese New Year in style with the biggest and best of street parties.
The celebration is a harbinger of good luck and a happy year ahead for the residents, shopkeepers, neighbours, spectators and friends. It’s a special event highlighting that Chinese culture is a vibrant part of Joburg and that Chinese customs, myths, beliefs and celebrations are now part of the city’s heritage. Culture and heritage are for sharing. In China, the new year festivities, which extend over a month from January to February, are also called the Spring Festival.
The suburb of Cyrildene is situated on an old Witwatersrand farm called Doornfontein. In 1936, members of the Bezuidenhout family applied to the city to establish a township which they proposed calling Northcrest. According to Anna Smith’s book,
Johannesburg Street Names, the city rejected this name because it was a misnomer and sounded too much like Northcliff. But by 1937, the land had changed hands and Finborough Estates were the new owners. The township was called Cyrildene after Cyril Cooper, the key player in the new development. The suburb was proclaimed on May 18, 1938.
The first residents built modest, mainly single-storey, dwellings on stands of about half an acre. Many early residents were second generation Jewish families who moved from the more densely populated areas of Yeoville and Bellevue. Cyrildene was a step up in the world.
The Cyrildene-Observatory Extension Hebrew Congregation was established in a private home in 1942, but by 1950 a hall had been built and in 1964, a synagogue was erected.
It was a beautifully laid out suburb with winding roads, curious turns and link points. It was consciously green from the start with the nearby Harvey Nature Reserve, Oldroyd Park at the top of the hill, a small park on Cyril Crescent and Dixon Park off Aida Avenue.
In the late ’70s, change came with the opening up of the suburb of Morning Hill. Many dead-end streets were cut through to the new suburb. New building stands were auctioned off and the sheep disappeared. Between trees, neat houses, a mountain and a lake below, Cyrildene has feng shui.
Change began almost imperceptibly in the 1980s and then speeded up in the 1990s as new immigrants saw the opportunity to work hard in the new Rainbow Nation and improve their lifestyle. So, a new Chinese immigrant community established themselves in the suburb. Mandarin and Cantonese began to be spoken and a street of restaurants emerged.
Cyrildene is unlike the old Johannesburg Chinatown to the west of the old CBD, in Commissioner Street near John Vorster Square, where third and fourth generation South African Chinese made an original niche. This second Chinatown has been created by new Chinese immigrants who arrived as the country opened up.
Derrick Avenue was speedily transformed into a busy Chinese street with houses demolished and new double and triple storey apartment blocks and shops built on the large stands. The new buildings were built in Chinese architectural style and looked like they were straight out of Beijing. By-laws and building regulations seemed to be unimportant as trading stalls were inserted in gardens of the houses along Derrick Avenue, houses became restaurants and shops, makeshift structures were built over gardens. Chinese calligraphy went up on shop windows. This was the place to find excellent Chinese food.
Cyrildene now began to appear in Chinese script. Older residents sold up, died, emigrated or moved on and the new buyers in the suburb were Chinese families.
At Bruma, the old Game store became an Oriental City and when the somewhat seedy flea market there moved across the road into Ernest Oppenheimer Avenue, that too was displaced after a few years by a brand new Asian emporium of small shops that combined local South African craft souvenirs with mass produced Chinese industrial, household wares and toys of all types.
The African sense of place was retained with the pavement souvenir craft market along Ernest Oppenheimer Avenue with immigrants from Congo, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi selling their hand made African bowls, soapstone sculptures, and beadwork.
Chinatown was definitely here to stay when an extraordinary Chinese-style arched gate, sponsored by the Chinese community which rented the land from the City of Joburg, complete with lions and dragons was erected at the corner of Friedland and Derrick Avenue. You could be in Hue in Vietnam or in Hong Kong or in Los Angeles or perhaps a corner of old Peking (Beijing). And the honoured guest who officially opened the gate to Chinatown in 2013 was none other than then president Jacob Zuma.
At the time of the 2014 general election, election posters appeared in Cyrildene in Chinese, urging the community to vote for the ANC.
At the opening ceremony, community spokesperson Mr Xinzhu spoke of the desire of the Chinese community to include the arch in tourist attractions.
At this year’s Chinese New Year celebrations, Derrick Avenue was turned into an outdoor boulevard for dining and was the street party of the year.
The festival drew crowds of bystanders, spectators and onlookers. People filled the pavements for over 400m. It was a beautiful warm afternoon and the festivities kicked off at 5.30 with parades, dance and marching bands and of course, the dragon dance.
The Dragon Dance along Derrick Avenue was indeed a highlight. The dragon is a theatre spectacle costume made to look like a decorated dragon. The garish yellow and red sparkling dragon was supported by about 20 men as it made its way up the street. At each shop entrance, noisy firecrackers were set off to chase out the evil spirits and the bad experiences of the previous year.
Many Chinese people were dressed in traditional costumes and waving LED light sticks. It was a spectacle of glitz, glitter, glamour and a lot of fun. A float (a decorated truck) of people came past throwing out fortune cookies and small good luck tokens and charms and sweets. Everyone joined in the sense of occasion.
After sunset, fireworks lit up the sky. There was one cascade of rainbow rockets after another, ending in multicoloured bright flashing stars spreading over the night sky for over two hours.
Guests were served a banquet. Plates of exotic dishes kept coming. Unusual platters of Chinese food were served, one after another, no two the same.
It was a delicious variety of food and a taste sensation to be savoured. Best was the salmon and a huge plate of pink prawns, but there was also calamari and sushi, sweet and sour pork, delicious duck, thin slices of beef, chicken that did not look like chicken and fish that tasted more like meat.
Each dish, with so many different spices, tasted nothing like western Chinese cooking nor indeed like anything we opt for when visiting a Chinese restaurant. The meat, fish and chicken dishes were interspersed with unusual vegetables dishes. The dessert was a huge platter of refreshing chunks of watermelon.
Apparently, each Chinese restaurant was asked to supply one plate of food for each of the tables. Here was a division of labour, and specialities of the house were to the fore. All free and no charge to honoured guests.
This is the Year of the Pig, in Chinese mythology and belief the animal is a symbol of wealth and prosperity. The size and warmth of the party on Derrick Avenue ushered in the Year of the Pig, 2019. It is going to be an excellent year. – The Heritage Portal