SINGAPORE -- The first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year will be celebrated Saturday on a grand scale in many shops and homes. This has been the tradition among overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, particularly in Singapore and Malaysia.
But for Indonesia's 6 million ethnic Chinese, the festivities will be modest and on a low key -- as they had been in the past 30 years. Apart from the token performance of the dragon dance or barongsai in the Chinese quarters of Jakarta and perhaps other Indonesian cities, there will be no public display of gaiety on the scale of their counterparts in Singapore and Malaysia.
This is despite the recent lifting of restrictions on Chinese cultural and religious practices by the administration of President Abdurrahman Wahid, which in principle allows them to do so for the first time in 30 years. Chinese New Year, or Imlek as it is called in Indonesia, will instead be quietly marked by visits to the temples, friends and relatives and private dinners.