Chinese New Year is the most important festival in the Chinese lunar calendar and there was no way Alan Chew from Houston Technology was going to miss the opportunity to celebrate. Senior writer Mary Anne Gill was there with 100 other ‘movers and shakers’.
Alan Chew with Hamilton deputy mayor Angela O’Leary, left, and mayor Paula Southgate, at the Chinese New Year. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
The dress code to Alan Chew’s annual Chinese New Year celebrations was to wear something you didn’t mind getting messed up.
Come prepared with non-stainable clothing, the invitation said.
Held at the Canton Hong Kong restaurant last month, the event marked the beginning of the Year of the Dragon. Guests included Hamilton mayor Paula Southgate, deputy mayor Angela O’Leary, Waikato Regional Council chair Pamela Storey, city councillor Tim Macindoe on the eve of his election, National Party MPs Ryan Hamilton and Tama Potaka as well as other business, community and cultural leaders.
Their collective admiration for Chew – who came from Malaysia to Hamilton 50 years ago to study management at Waikato University and from 1986 built an innovative technology company – and the opportunity to abandon etiquette and flick food around – saw yet another great turnout.
Before the Yee Sang Ceremony: raw salmon with a salad of many fresh plant ingredients and a dressing.
The highlight came with the ‘Yee Sang Ceremony’ when guests aimlessly tossed fresh, raw salmon with a salad of many fresh plant ingredients and a dressing.
Yee Sang stands for raw fish and in a culture steeped in tradition and good luck omens, raw fish was chosen because the word ‘raw’ is a homonym for ‘alive’. The ceremony symbolises the rejuvenation of whatever the participants wish to give new life to.
The ceremony involved the placement of the ingredients on a plate and then performing the ‘loh sang’ which is where everyone chipped in to stir the ingredients.
The more vigorously you stir the more prosperous your year will be. If that is the case, the people who tossed their food to the ceiling are in for a cracker of a year.
After the Yee Sang Ceremony: food everywhere, including on clothes and the ceiling.
The ceremony was followed by a 10-course banquet prepared by a Chinese chef who has won international awards and included signature dishes like authentic Peking Duck, prawns with salted egg yolk and deep-fried sesame balls with ice cream.
“Embracing cultural diversity is essential for creating an inclusive community within the industry,” said Chew.
“Waikato people had been very kind to me and helped me build my company which is celebrating its 38th birthday this year.
“I have wanted to repay this generosity and feel that one very small way would be to bridge the cultures of the locals with that of the Asian community.”
There are an estimated 50,000 Asians living in the Waikato yet there is a dearth of opportunities for locals to understand and experience their special cultural events and customs, he said.
The inspiration for Chew’s innovativeness and hard work ethic came from his father who was born in Guangdong, China and moved to Hong Kong where he learned carpentry. From there he travelled to Singapore and then Kuala Lumpur where he helped build service stations for Americans, amassing enough money to send his son to New Zealand to further his education.
Alan Chew has been recognised for identifying the significance of contact tracing during the Covid pandemic.
He and the Houston team devised an innovative tech-based solution: a user-friendly QR code system for contact tracing. While the eventual Covid app was developed separately by Rush Digital, the Health Ministry acknowledged Chew’s contributions to the QR code concept.
- Billie Brown-Wahanui, formerly of Te Awamutu College, recently graduated from Waikato University with a Bachelor of Communication which she puts to good use in her role as marketing and campaign coordinator at Houston Technology. She organised a Chinese New Year ‘Yee Sang Ceremony’ in Hamilton last week for many of Waikato’s movers and shakers at the Canton Hong Kong restaurant.
Billie Brown-Wahanui. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
