Blessed by the God of Prosperity

It's nearly bedtime, and I'm sitting in the evening breeze on a deck with no railings seeing and hearing the evening tide rush in under my feet. Craig and I are now staying in the Chew family jetty, a village in the heart of old Georgetown that was built out here on stilts over the water about 140 years ago. The Chew Jetty Homestay is a very welcoming place, a family home with maybe four or five bedrooms and two living rooms, right literally on the water. In the kitchen if you have crumbs you can help them fall through to the ocean if you like, no need for dustpan. The family's really nice, modern yet traditional, iPads and iphones around and ms chew, Suping, is Craig's active Facebook friend, but Mrs Chew senior cooks awesome traditional food, ms chew our hostess is kind and full of excellent information about her town and traditions, and people seem very relaxed about having three rooms filled by strangers.

Actually, Chew Jetty as an entire dock is very accepting of strangers. It's hot, so all front doors and windows are open, and lots of Chinese, Malay, European and other tourists come out to walk the long, rambling dock, wide enough for a motor scooter, all day and evening long to check it out. It's a very nice place to stroll, you can be out in Chew Jetty and see New Years fireworks that other ketties have set off, rising over the roofs. To live in Chew Jetty, your last name must be Chew. Our part Is one long boardwalk alley with lots of homes off it the size of double wide mobile homes, but lots more character of course. Actually turns out there is an older, parallel boardwalk. There are apparently 83 houses, and 3,000 Chews living here, and about 60% are related.

Tonight, things seem to be calming down a little from New Year's Eve, but tomorrow we hear lion dancers will be here, to dance at any door that has hung the vegetables and other suitable offerings outside that lions like to eat. Evidently these felines are vegetarian. Huh. Thus far we have seen about four different lion dancer companies, some quite amazingly and dangerously acrobatic. They must practice together with their drummers, so much, to know what cues to give for their leaps, rearing motions, and for the way they love to tease an honored host or a nosy tourist. I love watching the way they can cock an ear, wiggle their haunches, chew red money like tickets, or even the other day chew up and spit out a snake. Today a lion (two people) jumped up on a line of about twelve sets of sturdy steel posts with flat foot sized platforms, each paid at different heights and spaced a meter apart at various heights more then two meters, and bounded across them, faked slipping off of them.... It was amazing.

At this same site the god of prosperity showed up.... Wearing an elaborate royal headdress, dressed in red and gold robes, with a waist long (Manchu style?) beard. If he touched you or you touched him, good luck for the year! He shook our hands kindly and gave us each a sweet candy. I'm treasuring mine because I'm enjoying very good luck now with my sweet husband Craig eating our way through the hawker stalls of Penang and staying with this nice family. How lucky is that!

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Well. We got luckier. No, things havent calmed down so much yet. Tonight after writing this, we got caught up happily with the family lighting off tiny firecrackers on the back deck, with Suping, her friend, her sister and sisters kids a boy about five or six named weh cha, a little sister... Meanwhile loud, forceful fireworks are going off. We think we are going to sleep, the explosions get even better, we get up to watch again, suddenly one of their boats, one that's decked, comes along, the family puts benches and plastic chairs on, and away we chug in the darkness watching fireworks as we go, over to the very grand Floating Temple of Qwan Yin. Double decker gleaming glowing neon temple. Was a lot of fun. We all arrived barefoot so the folks there may have wondered, what's going on. Within second it seemed, Suping had us uploaded to Facebook. Oh, this modern world.